George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore was an English politician and colonizer. He achieved domestic political success as a Member of Parliament and later Secretary of State under King James I. He lost much of his political power after his support for a failed marriage alliance between Prince Charles and the Spanish House of Habsburg royal family. Rather than continue in politics, he resigned all of his political offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council and declared his Catholicism publicly. He was created Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage upon his resignation. Baltimore Manor was located in County Longford, Ireland.

Little is known of the ancestry of the Yorkshire branch of the Calverts. At George Calverts knighting, it was claimed that his family originally came from Flanders . Calverts father, Leonard was a country gentleman who had achieved some prominence as a tenant of Lord Wharton, and was wealthy enough to marry a gentlewoman of a noble line, Alicia or Alice Crossland . He established his family on the estate of the laterbuilt Kiplin Hall, near Catterick in Richmondshire, of Yorkshire. George Calvert was born at Kiplin in late 1579 . His mother AliciaAlice died onNovember 1587, when he was fifteen years old. His father then married Grace Crossland , Alicias first cousin.

Source: Wikipedia