county allotted them, which they joyfully accepted, and
settling about the Severn river in 1649, near the site of the
present city of Annapolis, called their new home Provi-
dence.

After the execution of Charles I, the Virginia Assembly
proclaimed his son, Charles II, as lawful King, in defiance
of the statute which made such a declaration high treason.
So Parliament sent out commissioners with a force to
reduce to submission "the plantations within the Chesa-
peake bay, " thus including Maryland, where no opposition
to Parliament existed. Under this authority Governor
Stone was displaced, and William Fuller, a Puritan of
Providence, with a body of commissioners, was put in
possession of the government. These repealed the Tolera-
tion Act of 1648, and substituted an act visiting with
penalties all adherents of "popery and prelacy, " as well as
Quakers, Baptists and other miscellaneous sects.

Cromwell, disapproving of their doings, wrote to the
Virginia commissioners commanding them to leave Mary-
land undisturbed. Baltimore then ordered Stone to take
the government again. As Fuller refused to surrender it,
Stone marched against him with the men of St. Mary's,
and a battle was fought on the shore of the Severn on
March 24, 1655, in which Stone's party were defeated, and
he himself wounded. The prisoners taken were condemned
to death, and four of them were shot.

The whole matter was referred for final settlement to the
Commissioners of Plantations, whose decision was favora-
ble to Baltimore. Bennett and Matthews, the Virginia
commissioners, then surrendered Maryland to the Proprie-
tary, who re-established his government with Josias Fendall
as Governor.

Fendall had not been long in office, when he entered
into a plot to render himself independent of the Proprie-
tary, and indeed, to annul Baltimore's authority altogether;
so he was superseded, and Baltimore's brother, Philip Cal-
vert, appointed governor. The Proprietary,. in person or
by deputy, was the chief executive, assisted by the Council.
The Legislature sat in two Houses, the Governor and
Council forming the Upper House, and the elected repre-
sentatives of the freemen to the Lower House. All legis-
lation originated with the Assembly, subject to the Propri-