xxxii INTRODUCTION

tions and conditions that revolutions commonly promote. The Revolution
of 1689 in Maryland was not of local origin, but was an extension of that
in the home country urged on by a small group of individuals in the prov-
ince. There had long been local opposition to the proprietary's charter
rights, but there were no substantial grievances just then demanding drastic
measures for correction; the Protestants had long outnumbered the Roman
Catholics, and had enjoyed complete freedom of worship since the founding
of the colony, or shortly after it. A change in the provincial government was
in harmony with the humor of the time, however; local differences were easily
exacerbated and magnified into revolutionary causes; and when an order of
the proprietary to the provincial government to proclaim the accession of
William and Mary miscarried, and recognition of the new sovereigns seemed
grudging, royal disfavor was added. Lord Baltimore's charter opposed an
obstacle; sufficient grounds for its revocation were not ready to hand. But
the Lord Chief Justice lent the aid of an opinion* that while there ought
to be a trial of charges, the matter was so pressing as to justify action first
and investigation afterwards, an opinion that has been regarded as disclosing
a flaw in Holt's greatness, but may perhaps be viewed as displaying rather a
flaw in the general conceptions of due process thus far developed. State
trials with the results predetermined had not been entirely outgrown, or, at
least, they were of recent memory.

Rehearsal of all the changes in the province would be out of place here.
Religious liberty, which had prevailed in the colony so far, was now given
up.² In 1692, the Church of England was set up as the established church,
and once the practice of equal toleration had been so far abandoned, the
movement went further and further, succeeding statutes placing restrictions
on Catholics and dissenters, and for a time lawyers of the Roman Catholic
faith were forbidden to practice their profession.³ But there seems to have
been less severity in actual experience under the laws than in the letter of
them, for there was no grave persecution; so far as known, no person was
ever excluded from the province because of religion, and no one suffered
death or pain. The statute laws of the province generally were examined
and compiled for greater convenience and certainty in the administration of
justice, and many new statutes were passed. One of the most important
changes was that of the removal of the capital in 1695 from Catholic
St. Mary's to Protestant Annapolis, but this was a change that had been sug-
gested in former years by the advance of the population up the shores of the
bay, and may possibly have occurred soon without a revolution. St. Mary's

¹ George Chalmers, Opinions of Eminent Lawyers on Various Points of English Juris-
prudence (London, 1814), 29.

² Lawrence C. Wroth, " The First Sixty Years of the Church of England in Maryland,"
Md. Hist. Mag., XI, i; H. L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Eighteenth Century (New
York, 1924), I, 365 et seq.

s Archives, VIII, 448, 552; Acts 1702, ch. i, ibid., XXIV, 265; 1704, ch. 34, ibid.,
p. 418; 1718, ch. 4, ibid., XXXIII, 289; McMahon, op. cil., p. 244; Mereness, op. cil., p. 437.