There is nothing “baronial,” nothing arrogant, about Doughoregan Manor, for though the house is noble, its nobility, consisting in spaciousness, simplicity, and grace combined with age, fits well into what, it seems to me, should be the architectural ideals of a republic.  No house could be freer of unessential embellishment; in detail it is plain almost to severity; yet the full impression that it gives, far from being austere, is of friendliness and hospitality.  An approachable sort of house, a “homelike” house, it is perhaps less “imposing” than some other mansions, coeval with it, in Virginia, in Annapolis, and in Charleston; and yet it is as impressive, in its own way, as Warwick Castle, or Hurstmonceaux, or Loches, or Chinon, or Chenonceaux, or Heidelberg—­not that it is so vast, that it has glowering battlements, or that it stuns the eye, but for precisely opposite reasons:  because it is a consummate expression of republican cultivation, of a fine old American home, and of the fine old American gentleman who built it, and whose descendants inhabit it to-day:  Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last to survive of those who signed the Declaration of Independence.

The first Charles Carroll, known in the family as “the Settler,” came from Ireland in 1688, and became a great landowner in Maryland.  He was a highly educated gentleman and a Roman Catholic, as have also been his descendants.  He acted as agent for Lord Baltimore.

His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, or “Breakneck Carroll” (so called because he was killed by a fall from the steps of his house), built the Carroll mansion at Annapolis, now the property of the Redemptionist Order.

The third and most famous member of the family was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, “the Signer,” builder of the manor house at Doughoregan—­which, by the way, derives its name from a combination of the old Irish words dough, meaning “house” or “court,” and O’Ragan, meaning “of the King”; the whole being pronounced, as with a slight brogue, “Doo-ray-gan,” the accent falling on the middle syllable—­this Charles Carroll, “the Signer,” most famous of his line, was “Breakneck’s” only son.  When eight years old he was sent to France to be educated by the Jesuits.  He spent six years at Saint-Omer, one at Rheims, two at the College of Louis le Grand, one at Bourges, where he studied civil law, and after some further time in college in Paris went to London, entered the Middle Temple and there worked at the common law until his return to Maryland in 1765.

Although Maryland was founded by the Roman Catholic Baron Baltimore on a basis of religious toleration, the Church of England had later come to be the established church in the British colonies in America, and Roman Catholics were unjustly used, being disfranchised, taxed for the support of the English Church, and denied the right to establish schools or churches of their own, to celebrate the Mass, or to bear arms—­the bearing of arms having been “at that time the insignia of social position and gentle breeding.”