John Lewger

(1602 -1665)

This man served as the first Secretary of State and Attorney General of Maryland.  Educated at Trinity College in Oxford, where he met a young student named Cecil Calvert, Lewger was ordained as a minister in the Church of England.  Converting to Catholicism in 1635, he renewed his acquaintance with Calvert and helped write the promotional publication A Relation of Maryland.   In 1637, Lord Baltimore sent him to Maryland to administer the government and serve as an aid to Governor Leonard Calvert.   Lewger built a new home that he named St. John’s in 1638, a building that has been intensively explored by archaeologists.  He helped formalize and record the actions of government and law for the colony, registered land claims, and kept Lord Baltimore informed of events.   When Richard Ingle attacked St. Mary’s in 1645, Lewger was captured, his home plundered, and he was taken in chains as a prisoner back to England.  Released later that year, he returned briefly, and his wife Anne died around this time.  Lewger then sailed back to England, continued working for Lord Baltimore and became a Catholic priest.  He served as Cecil Calvert’s chaplain and authored several books.  While helping victims of the plague outbreak in London in 1665, Lewger died and was buried at St. Giles in the Fields cemetery in a mass grave with other plague victims.

 

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