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from religious strife, but from 1645 to 1659
there was more or less trouble, the Roman
Catholics being treated with great injustice.
After the Restoration the colony had peace
until the mad folly and bigotry of James
II robbed him of his throne, in 1688, and
inflamed Englishmen everywhere with an
intense hatred of the Church of Rome of
which the foolish King was so unwise a
representative. The Protestant ardor of
England soon spread to Maryland where
the ratio of Protestants to Roman Catholics
was now 11 to 1. There was the great-
est enthusiasm for the new King and
Queen, William and Mary, who were
earnestly requested in addresses from all
the counties, except Anne Arundel, to
make Maryland a Royal Province. In
1690 the King, took possession and that
year Sir Lionel Copley was made the first
royal governor. Public officers were now
appointed by the Crown, laws received the
King's approval, all processes ran in the
names of William and Mary. Lord Balti-
more, however, retained all his territorial
rights. And so Maryland, by petition of
her own people, came under the rule of the
English Government.

THE CHURCH IN MARYLAND

Many of the early colonists on Maryland
were certainly members of the Church of
England, and the records show a chapel
in 1638 - four years after the settlement
began. In 1642 three Churches of the
English faith had been built - Trinity, St.
George's and one in St. Clement's Hun-
red, of which the name was not given, Of
course all of these churches were in St.
Mary's county, where the first settlers took
up land and built their houses. We find
no notice of any church clergyman on the
Western Shore before 1650. Dr. Hawks,
in his Ecclesiastical History, vol. II, Mary,
land, says that in some parts of the Prov-
ince, before the establishment of parishes,
it is known that the members of the Church
of England were in the habit of assem-
bling for worship at such places as were
most convenient. Undoubtedly these

churches were used for worship even if
there were no one in orders to minister to
the people. The Rev. William Wilkin-
son was, undoubtedly, the first English
clergyman that ever set foot on the West-
ern Shore. He came over in 1650. He
lived on St. George's Hundred, the earliest
location probably of the Church of England
in Maryland. There is a recorded evi-
dence of his having preached a funeral
sermon for which he received 100 pounds
of tobacco. His only clerical predessessor
in Maryland was the Rev. Richard James
who was chaplain of the colony on the
Eastern Shore in 1632. Between 1679
and 1688 three clergymen were sent over
by the Bishop of London who had charge
of all the churches in America. One of
these was the Rev. John Turlinge - desig-
nated "Presbyter Anglicanus" - who came
to Charles County in 1684 when he mar-
ried William Dent and Elizabeth Fowke.
This marriage is recorded in the Charles
County Records, now kept in the
Land Office at Annapolis. Very few clergy-
men came over, however, and in 1692
there were only four or five in the whole
colony. In explanation of this fact it must
be remembered that the Province increas-
ed but slowly in population. In 1692
there were only 25,000 colonists in Mary-
land. These were, by no means, united in
religious opinion. Churchmen, Roman
Catholics, Presbyterians, Puritans, and
Quakers were all found here. It is impos-
sible to tell how large a proportion of the
people were members of the Church of
England which had eighteen or twenty
places of worship. That the Church had
a clear majority over the Romanists and
Dissenters is shown by the fact that the
General Assembly of 1692 passed an Act
for the establishment of religious worship
in this Province according to the Church
of England. The ten counties of which
Maryland then consisted, were divided
into thirty parishes, seventeen of which
were on the Western Shore, and thirteen
on the Eastern Shore, of the Chesapeake
Bay.

proved that He did not regard Maryland a Roman Catholic Colony by refusing to grant to the priests that which was their then right in every country that recognized the authority of the pope. Baltimore insisted that all his colonists should be under the common law and applied to Rome to have the Jesuits replaced by secular priests. An order to that effect was really issued by the Propaganda. He also issued new conditions, one of which declared that no lands should be held by any ecclesiastical society without license from the Proprietary - a rule that was certainly in defiance of all Roman Catholic tradition. The Jesuit fathers retracted from their position and were allowed to remain. See William Hand Browne's Maryland: The History of a Palatine, American Commonwealth Series. I am indebted to this book for much valuable information about the early history of the Colony.