Exemption of Protestant Dissenters from civil disabilities.
The last decade of the seventeenth century was a period of ceaseless wrangling over church matters. Almost every year saw some new act passed from which its opponents succeeded in causing the assent of the crown to be withheld. The government of William III. was not ill-disposed toward a policy of toleration, except toward Papists. Accordingly, although the act of 1692 remained substantially in force until the American Revolution, it was so qualified in 1702 as to exempt Quakers and other Protestant Dissenters from civil disabilities, and to allow them the free exercise of public worship in their own churches or meeting-houses. They were not exempted, however, from the poll tax for the maintenance of the Episcopal church.
Seymour’s reprimand to the Catholic priests.
For the Catholics there was neither exemption nor privilege; they were shamefully insulted and vexed. In the autumn of 1704 two priests were summoned before the council: the one, William Hunter, was accused of consecrating a chapel, which he answered with a plea that was in part denial and in part “confession and avoidance;” the other, Robert Brooke, acknowledged the truth of the charge that he had said mass at the chapel of St. Mary’s. The request of these gentlemen for legal counsel was refused. As the complaint against them was a first complaint, they were let off with a reprimand, which the newly installed governor, John Seymour, thus politely administered: “It is the unhappy temper of you and all your tribe to grow insolent upon civility and never know how to use it, and yet of all people you have the least reason for considering that, if the necessary laws that are made were let loose, they are sufficient to crush you, and which (if your arrogant principles have not blinded you) you must need to dread. You might, methinks, be content to live quietly as you may, and let the exercise of your superstitious vanities be confined to yourselves, without proclaiming them at public times and in public places, unless you expect by your gaudy shows and serpentine policy to amuse the multitude and beguile the unthinking, ... an act of deceit well known to be amongst you. But, gentlemen, be not deceived.... In plain and few words, if you intend to live here, let me hear no more of these things; for if I do, and they are made good against you, be assured I’ll chastise you.... I’ll remove the evil by sending you where you may be dealt with as you deserve.... Pray take notice that I am an English Protestant gentleman, and can never equivocate.” After this fulmination the governor ordered the sheriff of St. Mary’s county to lock up the Catholic chapel and “keep the key thereof;” and for all these proceedings the House of Burgesses declared themselves “cheerfully thankful” to his excellency, whom they found “so generously bent to protect her majesty’s Protestant subjects here against insolence and growth of Popery.”[118]
Cruel laws against Catholics.
From 1704 to 1718 several ferocious acts were passed against Catholics. A reward of £100 was offered to any informer who should “apprehend and take” a priest and convict him of saying mass, or performing any of a priest’s duties; and the penalty for the priest so convicted was perpetual imprisonment. Any Catholic found guilty of keeping a school, or taking youth to educate, was to spend the rest of his life in prison. Any person sending his child abroad to be educated as a Catholic was to be fined £100. No Catholic could become a purchaser of real estate. Certain impossible test oaths were to be administered to every Papist youth within six months after his attaining majority, and if he should refuse to take them he was to be declared incapable of inheriting land, and his nearest kin of Protestant faith could supplant him. The children of a Protestant father might be forcibly taken away from their widowed mother and placed in charge of Protestant guardians. When extra taxes were levied for emergencies, Catholics were assessed at double rates.[119]
Crown requisitions.
These atrocities of the statute book were a symptom of the inflammatory effect wrought upon the English mind by the gigantic war against Louis XIV., and immediately afterward by the wild attempt of the so-called James III. to seize the crown of Great Britain. From the accession of William and Mary to the end of the reign of Anne, war against France was perpetual except for the breathing spell after the Peace of Ryswick. This state of things brought a fresh burden upon Maryland. War between France and Great Britain meant war between the Algonquin tribes and the English colonies aided by the Five Nations. The new situation was heralded in the Congress which met at New York in 1690, at Leisler’s invitation, when Maryland was called upon to contribute men and money toward the invasion of Canada. With the advent of the royal government came royal requisitions for military purposes; and although this new burden was due to the new continental situation rather than to the change in the provincial government, it was one thing the more to make Marylanders look back with regret to the days of the proprietary rule.
Benedict Calvert becomes a Protestant.
Revival of the palatinate, 1715.