viii                                             Preface.

the intention of the Assembly to remove the seat of government to
Anne Arundel, and the Mayor and Council of St. Maries earnestly pro-
tested against a measure which implied the ruin of that ancient city, but
their protest was rejected with mockery and coarse insult, showing the
bitter animosity of the Assembly. In the following Session, Feby.-Mar.
1694/5, the Assembly met at Anne Arundel Town (afterwards called
Annapolis) to which the Provincial Court and public records were
removed.

It was, no doubt, a wise move. The desirability of a more central
seat of government, after the spread of population into the middle and
northern counties, had been for some time apparent, and in 1683 there
had been a temporary and tentative removal to Anne Arundel county,
but no permanent change made, on account of insufficient accommoda-
tions. It is plain, however, that other considerations beside that of
public convenience, entered into the motives for removal. St. Maries
was distinctively Catholic, and intimately associated with the Proprietary
Government, while Anne Arundel and the settlement on the Severn had
been from the first distinctively and aggressively Protestant. The
removal of the capital emphasized the fact that Maryland was no longer
proprietary and Catholic, but royal and Protestant.

Nicholson was a man of great ability and integrity, of liberal views
and of firm purposes. As a matter of course he made enemies in Vir-
ginia, and their calumnies have been accepted even by some recent
writers without examination. In Maryland he seems to have made a
highly favorable impression, and the Burgesses, even when contending
with him, took care to express their respect and confidence. Their
words on one such occasion are worth repeating:—

"We have not the least doubt of our rights or liberties being
infringed by our gracious Sovereign or our noble and worthy Governor ;
and we do sincerely acknowledge that his Excellency governs by the
fairest measures and freest administration of the laws we are capable of
understanding, and therefore have not the least apprehension of his
invading our rights and privileges" (p. 415. See also pp. 97-8, and

467).

One thing Nicholson had much at heart, in Virginia as in Maryland,
and that was the cause of public education. It was by his exertions that
William and Mary College in Virginia was founded in 1693; and one
of his first acts in Maryland was to urge upon the Assembly the estab-
lishment of a system of free schools. The subject was considered at the
session of Sept.-Oct., 1694, and subscriptions were raised, the Gov-