Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 25, 2017

George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore (1579–1632), was 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, and resigned all his offices in 1625 except for his position on the Privy Council. After declaring his Catholicism publicly, he was created Baron Baltimore in the Irish peerage. He took an interest in the British colonisation of the Americas, at first for commercial reasons and later to create a refuge for English Catholics. He became the proprietor of Avalon, the first sustained English settlement on the southeastern peninsula of the island of Newfoundland. Discouraged by its cold climate and the sufferings of the settlers, he looked for a more suitable spot and sought a new royal charter to settle what would become the state of Maryland. Calvert died five weeks before the new Charter was sealed, leaving the settlement of the Maryland colony to his son Cecil. His second son Leonard was the first colonial governor of the Province of Maryland.