territory, sold their possessions to the newcomers, and the
first site, St. Mary's City, called then "Augusta Carolina,"
was available. A palisade was erected immediately.

Government from St. Mary's City

For upwards of sixty years, the Province centered
around St. Mary's City. The Assembly, set up very soon
after a food supply had been assured and protection against
enemies provided, was made up of the freemen, i.e., plant-
ers and settlers. The combined efforts of all the settlers
were needed, moreover, to cope with the almost immediate
difficulty that arose with white settlers from Virginia who
had begun trading with the Indians before the Calvert
party arrived. The foremost among these men was Cap-
tain William Claiborne, a trader with headquarters on
Kent Island. The dispute is sometimes known as the Cal-
vert-Claiborne controversy. After a naval skirmish and
slight loss of life, Claiborne was declared an outlaw March
24,1637.

"Ingle's War" was another vexation in the peaceful order-
ing of the new colony. Richard Ingle was a vigorous parti-
san of Parliament in its victorious struggle with the King
that was to produce the Commonwealth. Coming first to
Maryland in 1642, he finally exceeded any legal powers he
might have had and took possession of St. Mary's City,
making prisoner members of the Assembly. The affair
ended inconclusively in 1646, but Ingle, meanwhile, arrested
Father Andrew White and Father Thomas Copley and took
them in chains to England.

Act of Toleration

The bigotry implicit in Ingle's special irritation at Cath-
olic priests and Royalists makes especially pointed the solici-
tude Lord Baltimore showed at this period for freedom of
conscience. As early as 1643, the Puritan Governor of
Massachusetts, John Winthrop, had spoken approvingly
of Governor Calvert as "for free liberty of religion." The
Governor had taken a more liberal attitude on the question
of Puritan settlers, certainly, than had the administrators of
Virginia. The "Act concerning Religion," which the Mary-
land Assembly passed in 1649, gives Maryland rightful
claim to being the first civil regime to recognize freedom of
conscience. The fact that within sixty years after the
passage of this law Catholics were repressed under an "Act
to prevent the growth of popery" does not detract from the