(1580-1632) First Lord Baltimore, statesman and colonizer, born Kipling, Yorkshire, England; died London. He held important diplomatic posts under James I, was knighted, 1617, and appointed principal secretary of state, but resigned his secretaryship in 1624 upon his conversion to the Catholic faith. In 1613 he was one of the committee sent to Ireland to examine into the grievances of the Catholics, and for his good offices he was, in 1625, raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Baltimore of Baltimore (Gaelic: Baile Tigh Mor, town of the big house), in County Cork. In 1627 he visited a plantation in Newfoundland, later the Province of Avalon, which he had purchased in 1620, and established a colony there. About 1628 he obtained land in northern Virginia (the present Maryland), but died before the charter was granted.