He supported the Spanish match; and when Charles changed his policy he obtained from the king in 1623 a charter for his province, which he called Avalon.

In 1625 he resigned his secretaryship and openly avowed his adherence to the church of Rome; but the king, as a mark of favor, raised him to the Irish peerage, with the title of Baron of Baltimore, after a small town of that name in Ireland.[1] Baltimore returned to his plans of colonization, and in 1627 went to Newfoundland with his wife and children.

But the country proved too cold for him and he determined to "shift" to a warmer climate.
Accordingly, in August, 1629, he wrote to the king for a "grant of a precinct of land in Virginia," with the same privileges as those which King James gave him in Newfoundland.[2] Without waiting for a reply he left Avalon, and in October, 1629, arrived in Virginia, where the governor, Dr.John Pott, and his council received him politely but coldly.

Neither his religion nor his past career as a court favorite, nor the design which he made known of establishing an independent state within the confines of Virginia, commended him to the people of Jamestown.
Naturally, they wished to get rid of him, and the council tendered him the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, which, in the various instructions from the king, they were strictly enjoined to require of all new-comers.

The oath of allegiance occasioned no difficulty, but the oath of supremacy, which required Baltimore to swear that he believed the king to be "the only supreme governor in his realm in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes," was repugnant to him as a Catholic, and he declined to take it, but offered to subscribe to a modified form.