and Elizabeth Rivers, in the colony of Virginia on February 24, 1634 (also later the site of the cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth and Virginia Beach on the south side and Newport News and Hampton on the northern peninsula). After exploring the area, a few weeks later they sailed up the Potomac River, north of the Virginia shoreline and the southern border of their new colony and landed on the northern shore at Blakistone Island (later renamed St. Clement's Island) on March 25, 1634, erected a large cross, gave thanks and celebrated a Roman Catholic/Christian Mass with Father Andrew White who had accompanied them (later to be celebrated as "Maryland Day", an official state and local holiday). Two days later, on March 27, they returned further south down-river near the point where the Potomac meets the Bay at what is now St. Mary's City, then the site of a Native American village of the Yaocomico branch of the Piscataway tribe, whom the paramount chief had moved away to accommodate the new English settlers, so as to take advantage of the trading opportunities of their more powerful technology: industries, weapons and implements, and they began the work of establishing a settlement there. Governor of Maryland Following his brother's instructions, Leonard Calvert at first attempted to govern the country in an absolutist way, but in January 1635, he had to summon a colonial assembly, which became the foundation and first session of the modern General Assembly of Maryland, the third legislature to be established in the English colonies after the House of Burgesses in the Dominion of Virginia and the General Court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In 1638, the Assembly forced him to govern according to the common law of England, and subsequently the right to initiate legislation passed to the new General Assembly, representing the common "freeholders" (owners of freehold property) as subjects of the Crown. In 1638, Calvert seized a trading post at Kent Island established by the Virginian William Claiborne. In 1643, Governor Calvert went to England to discuss policies with his brother Lord Baltimore, the proprietor, leaving the affairs of the colony in charge of acting Governor Giles Brent, his brother-in-law (he had married Ann Brent, daughter of Richard Brent). Calvert returned to Maryland in 1644 with a new wife and children (William, born in 1643, and a daughter, Anne, born in 1644). That same year, Claiborne returned