Towards the close of 1646 Governor Calvert, who had been watching the progress of events from Virginia, deemed that the time was ripe for a counter revolution. He appeared at St. Mary’s, at the head of a small force levied in Virginia, and regained the government without resistance. Ingle left the Province, and the body of the people returned to their allegiance with marked alacrity. The most permanent evil caused by this usurpation—commonly called Clayborne and Ingle’s Rebellion, although they do not appear to have acted in concert—was the destruction of the greater part of the then existing records. The entire period is, consequently, involved in obscurity; and it is impossible to determine why it was that so many of the inhabitants were ready to join Ingle in what they afterwards called his “heinous rebellion.” Kent Island alone held out, and Governor Calvert went there in person, and brought back the island to subjection. The entire Province was now tranquillized; but Leonard Calvert did not live to enter upon his labors. On the 9th of June, 1647, he died at the little capital of St. Mary’s, which he had founded seventeen years before, and where he had long exercised, with wisdom and moderation, the highest executive and judicial functions. He had led out the colony from England when a young man of twenty-six years, and in the discharge of various offices he had, in the language of his commission, displayed “such wisdom, fidelity, industry, and other virtues as rendered him capable and worthy of the trust reposed in him.” Upon his death-bed he named Thomas Greene his successor, who now assumed the duties of governor. Greene proclaimed a general pardon to those in the Province who had “unfortunately run themselves into a rebellion,” and a pardon to those who had fled the Province, “acknowledging sorrow for his fault,” except “Richard Ingle, mariner.”[871]
The cause of the monarchy was now prostrate in England, and in the supremacy of Parliament Lord Baltimore saw great danger threatening his colonial dominion. It was necessary to put it out of the power of his enemies to say that Maryland was a Catholic colony, and at the same time he felt bound to protect his co-religionists. He therefore determined to pursue at once a policy of conciliation to the Puritans and of protection to the Catholics. The course he adopted was one well calculated to attain this double end. In August, 1648, he removed Greene, who was a Catholic, and appointed William Stone governor. Stone was a Virginian, and well known as a zealous Protestant and adherent of the Parliament. Lord Baltimore at the same time issued a new commission of the Council of State appointing five councillors, three of whom were Protestants, and he also appointed a Protestant secretary. Accompanying the commissions were oaths to be taken by the governor and councillors. Each was required to swear that he would not trouble or molest any person in the Province professing to believe in Jesus Christ, “and in particular no Roman Catholick for, or in respect of, his or her religion.” While the usual power to assent to laws in the name of the Proprietary was given to Stone, his commission contained a proviso that he should not assent to the repeal of any law—already made or which should thereafter be made—which might in any way concern matters of religion, without special warrant under the seal of the Proprietary. The object of this restriction was to prevent the repeal, by subsequent legislatures, of the act of religious toleration which Lord Baltimore purposed to have passed by the next Assembly. By this act he did not design to have the custom of religious liberty, which had prevailed from the settlement, at all enlarged, but only to be a law of the land beyond the reach of alteration. This security was the more necessary since Stone had agreed to procure five hundred settlers to reside in Maryland, and these might create an overwhelming Protestant majority.
The new governor and council entered upon their duties in the beginning of 1649, and in April of that year the Assembly met. The first law made was the famous “act concerning religion;” which, at least so far as it related to toleration, was doubtless one of the sixteen proposed laws which Lord Baltimore had sent over in the preceding year with the new commissions. The memorable words of this act, the first law securing religious liberty that ever passed a legally constituted legislature, provide that—
“Whereas, the inforcing of the conscience in matters of religion hath frequently fallen out to bee of dangerous consequence in those commonwealths where it hath beene practised, and for the more quiet and peaceable government of this province, and the better to preserve mutuall love and unity amongst the inhabitants here,” it was enacted that no person “professing to believe in Jesus Christ shall, from henceforth, be any waies troubled, molested, or discountenanced for, or in respect of, his or her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof within this province, ... nor any way compelled to the beleefe or exercise of any other religion, against his or her consent.”
The Assembly was composed of sixteen members, nine burgesses, the governor, and six councillors. Their faith has been a matter of dispute, but the most recent investigations make it certain that a majority were Catholics. The governor, three of the council, and two of the burgesses were, without doubt, Protestants. It is equally certain that three of the council and five burgesses were Catholics. The faith of the remaining two members is doubtful; and there is also doubt whether the governor and council sat as a distinct upper house or not.
By the other sections of the “act of toleration,” blasphemy, and denying the divinity of Christ, or the Trinity, were made punishable with death; and those using reproachful words concerning the Virgin Mary or the Apostles, or in matters of religion applying opprobrious epithets to persons, were punishable by a fine, and in default of payment by imprisonment or whipping. It does not appear that any of these penalties were ever inflicted. The toleration established by this act is so far in advance of all contemporary legislation, that it would be invidious to reproach the law-givers because they were not still more enlightened. It may have been that they regarded any broader toleration as prohibited by the provision of the charter respecting the Christian religion, or as likely to excite the animadversion of the Puritans in England. Parliament had recently passed a law (Act of 1648, chapter 114) for the preventing of the growth of heresy and blasphemy, by which the “maintaining with obstinacy” of any one of a number of enumerated heresies—such as that Christ is not ascended into heaven bodily, or that the bodies of men shall not rise again after they are dead—was made a felony punishable with death.
ENDORSEMENT OF THE TOLERATION ACT.