Chapter 8
THE CATHOLIC MARYLAND COLONY

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK

    Now it was for quite some time set in the heart of King James I the marrying of his son Charles, then heir to the throne, to the princess of Spain.  This unpopular effort at royal matchmaking, doomed from the first to failure, was also very much looked forward to by King James I's Secretary of State, George Calvert.  As a Roman Catholic, Calvert saw the advent of a queen of his own faith as likely to be of considerable advantage to him.  When it became known that the marriage negotiations had failed, the "Spanish party" as the few court sympathizers were called, among whom George Calvert was most conspicuous, fell into immediate disgrace.  With his political future wrecked, he placed his resignation in the hands of the king, and as a way of escape and a door of hope to retrieve his fallen fortunes, he looked across the seas to the Island of Newfoundland.  He could there take possession of land which was already his and establish a prosperous plantation
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     King James I died 25 March 1625.  His son Charles I then reigned until 1649.  George Calvert sailed into his Newfoundland colony August 1627, two years after the death of James I.   Newfoundland was not regarded as a very desirable place, whether for settlement or investment.  The harsh Newfoundland winters convinced George Calvert that this was not the place he could make his fortunes.  So he left Newfoundland, never to return, like closing the chapter on that part of his life.  He sailed south into the James River and colony of Virginia, October 1629.  His eyes, beholding the lushness of Virginia, were in stark contrast from where he had just been.  His mind was made up, Virginia was the place he would found his new colony.

     Once again George Calvert Lord Baltimore is back in England.   He makes his wishes known to King Charles I, even though the land he covets is already occupied by Virginian colonists.  The Virginians had received him kindly and treated him with the utmost consideration, yet he hesitated not only to beg for their land, but to go to very considerable trouble to deprive them of it. This was the atmosphere that began Lord Baltimore's colony of Maryland.

     Regarding King Charles I's part in the transaction, it has been rightly characterized: "A more iniquitous and unjust piece of business never stained Charles I's reign.  An English nobleman sets foot upon a colony in which his countrymen are already settled; surveys the vastness and fertility of its territory; finds that he is prohibited, alike by the laws of the province and of his native country, from obtaining his object unless he takes the "oath of supremacy"; refusing to take that oath, he returns to England, and secures, through his influence at court and his personal friendship with the king, property and privileges within the borders of the desired land , far greater than had been conferred upon any British subject."  Being a Roman Catholic nobleman in the presence of a sympathetic king had its great advantages.  In Protestant England, it had its pitfalls too.

CECILIUS CALVERT A MAN OF BUSINESS

     Two months after Sir George Calvert's death, 20 June 1632, a charter was issued, written in Latin, the only one of the colonial charters of which the original was in that language; it finally passed the Great Seal of England, with no other changes in its wording than the substitution of the name of Cecilius in place of his father's.  The king was firm for naming it Maryland or Tera Mariae.   Virginia memorialized the virgin queen, Elizabeth, and Maryland should memorialize his own beloved Catholic queen, daughter of Henry IV of France, so that side by side in the New World there should be the twin memorials of the two English queens.

     Cecilius Calvert, the second Baron of Baltimore, was the very man Maryland needed; for he was a clear-headed man of business, giving his chief attention to business rather than religion, the area where he and the Jesuits clashed, not that he was an irreligious man.  The task before him was stupendous.  A province of eight million acres, an area much larger than Maryland is today, we find him with great promptness and vigor, rousing public attention to the golden opportunities; no matter what station a man was in life, profits were absolutely sure.  The grandest descriptions were given to induce emigrants; a country abundantly rich in rivers, fish, mighty oaks, wild fruits and berries, wild animals and fowls, a soil so rich the seed in the worst years yielded two hundred fold, and moreover, the soil afforded three harvests a year!

     One would have almost supposed that an appeal as this would have been very disastrous in depopulating England herself, especially the Roman Catholic portion of the population, rushing as it were, from the evil English kingdom to that land of religious toleration and material paradise.  Apparently, strange as it seems, the New World held no such charms for them.  For only two hundred and some odd persons in all came forward in response to Cecilius Calvert's public appeal.   But even more remarkable, of the two hundred that came on board the two ships sailing from England, over three-fourths were of the English Church, of which most of those were commoners.  Of the Noblemen on board, Roman Catholics outranked those of the English Church.

     The two ships, the Ark and the Dove, with their mixed religionist emigrants departed Gravesend England, 19 October 1633. The Lord Proprietary Cecilius Calvert did not accompany them, nor did he ever set foot on his Maryland shores.  But as they were about to depart, he gave them some wise instructions.  Understanding the growing tensions between the Parliamentarians and those sympathetic to Romanism; and because he was wise and business-minded enough to not have his colonial enterprise wrecked for religious reasons, he counseled them to " cause all acts of Roman Catholic religion to be done as privately as maybe, and that they instruct all Roman Catholics to be silent on all occasions of discourse on Religion...and this to be observed at land as well as at sea". With this they departed, having yet three more passengers to be picked up, they made one last stop at the small south English Isle of Wight.

     At the very outset, can be seen the intentions of some of those on board.  The counsel of Cecilius Calvert obviously fell on deaf ears.  For the stop at the Isle of Wight was for the opportunity to smuggle on board three Jesuit priests.  Traveling to Maryland at first under assumed names, Jesuits Andrew White, John Althan, alias Gravenor, and a lay brother, Thomas Gervase, were all fully conscious that they were lawbreakers, and were so at their own peril.

     As the ships set sail 22 November 1633, we find the Jesuit priests engaged in a public Roman Catholic ceremony invoking the Blessed Virgin, the saints, and the guardian angels of Maryland for protection for a safe voyage.  On reaching the shores of Maryland, another very Roman Catholic ceremony was held.  A great cross was hewed out of a tree, and then being planted, the day being the Day of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the 25 March 1634, the priests celebrated Mass, "a thing which had never been done before in that part of the world".  On bended knees, they recited the Litanies of the Sacred Cross with great emotion, taking possession of the country for Christ and the sovereign Lord the King of England.  This conduct of disobedience was the first of a long series of deliberate acts of disloyalty credited to the Jesuit Society in Maryland, causing great distress for Lord Baltimore and eventually the revoking of his charter.

     The first several years however, went smoothly.  Everyone worked at the task before them, establishing their new home. Trees were felled, fields planted, homes built, streets laid out; everything was done in the most practical and business-like manner.  Soon the settlers were able to abandon the ships which had so long sheltered them, and take up their dwelling on the land.  But on the 8 August 1637, another group of emigrants came to the Maryland colony.  Along with them was a man whose name was Thomas Copley, alias Philip Fisher, a Jesuit priest, who carefully hid his priestly status, so that for a time he was not suspected by the colonist.  With his arrival, things changed drastically.
 
     It was chiefly due to Jesuit Thomas Copley's efforts that the few Roman Catholics who were on board the Ark and the Dove had been a part of the Maryland expedition.  When Lord Baltimore advertised for emigrants, the Jesuit society considered that it had in his new plantation a favorable opportunity of extending its influence in America under the English flag.  Maryland, to be sure, offered them opportunities in this direction denied them elsewhere.  New England was forbidden territory to them; so was Virginia.  The Lord Proprietary of Maryland was a Roman Catholic, and with him and his relatives, they had great influence. Why not accept the Lord Baltimore's terms and furnish him with just the settlers his province needed?  The terms were good. Two hundred acres for every man sent out went to the successful agent.

     The Jesuit Society became one of Lord Baltimore's recruiting agencies; its executive officer for this purpose was Thomas Copley.  His venture as an emigration agent resulted in sending to Maryland, not less than twenty-eight persons.  Jesuit Copley subsequently presented on behalf of the Jesuit Society a claim against Lord Baltimore for six thousand acres of Maryland land. Successful, however as it was, this process of acquiring land was too slow for Copley's energetic soul.  He himself, with nineteen more emigrants under his charge, was looking for four thousand more acres of land. But soon after coming to the colony, he inaugurated so specious a scheme of securing land from the Indians, that had it eventually succeeded, Baltimore would soon have no land to call his own.  Acquiring land was not the only area that Jesuit Copley was aggressive in.

     With Copley's advent in 1637, the relations existing between the Anglicans and their Roman Catholic brethren were at once changed.  Copley was of an energetic nature and matters religiously were not moving fast enough.  Following upon his arrival, the policy of the Roman Catholics suddenly became one of aggression.  Work must be undertaken; more converts were needed in the colony where it was infested with "heretics".  Their methods of accomplishing this were various; chiefly, however, they sought success by vigorous efforts of proselytizing, even forcing their way into Protestant homes; by rigidly excluding Anglicans from political office/ and by working the legislature in their own interest.

     Even though the Anglican Churchmen were in the majority numerically throughout the province, many were not freemen; being either slaves or indentured servants, and by law they did not possess the right of speaking and voting upon the laws by which they were to be governed.  The "gentlemen" in the colony, of this class, the Roman Catholics were in the majority. It was these conditions then, at the beginning of the colony, that made the Anglican Churchmen politically weak.  And so when the first Assembly was gathered together on a basis of freemen suffrage, even though the Anglican Churchmen on actual ballot were in the majority, the Romanists were in a position to materially influence proceedings in their favor.

THE GOVERNMENT IS CATHOLIQUE

    "The Government is Catholique", it was said.  Thus the first Maryland Assembly presented the singular spectacle of a considerable community of Englishmen subject to Roman Catholic influence at a time when the celebration of the Mass was a capital felony in England.  For the first time since Mary's reign, English supporters of the papacy found themselves able to dominate a legislative assembly in their own interest.  And they were not slow in taking advantage of the situation.

     It is incredible, that the first order of business at hand was to pass the "Act for Church Liberties".  This Act, in direct violation of English statutes, immediate but hidden effect, was to place the clergy of the Roman Church beyond control of the civil power exempting them from taxation and many of the duties of citizenship, and enabling their Church, among other things, to hold property independent of the state, a right by law, which even the English Church herself could not do.  In essence, they had established the Roman Catholic Church as the religion of the state; hardly a wise proceeding, forcing such a radical measure as this through the infant legislature, especially considering the religious climate at the time in England.  And that climate was not the result of bigotry or prejudice, but like a burnt child who dreads the fire, it was just a matter of self-survival.  England had had enough of Rome.

     Even before the Act for Church Liberties was passed, 23 October 1640, Lord Baltimore was receiving news informing him of the bitter feelings against the aggressive measures which had been agitated in the colony.  Even worse, he received first hand a letter from Jesuit Copley, 3 April 1638, of demands of very extravagant privileges and news, asking Lord Baltimore to approve the proceedings as a 'son' of the Church.  On the margin of this letter Lord Baltimore had written: 'All their tenants as well as servants he intimates here ought to be excepted from the temporal government". The news came as a bombshell to Lord Baltimore; he was aghast.  At the same time, affairs in England were casting dark shadows.  So that however a good Romanist he was, and however anxious he may have been to further the interest of his Church, he could not prudently have followed Copley's advice.

     Lord Baltimore knew the law and he was without excuse if he broke it, and he had no intention of being pilloried as an example of disobedience to it, nor would he imperil his property by any ill-timed generosity.  Indeed, so impartially did he act, that one would scarcely have suspected him of being a Roman Catholic at all, much to the extreme disappointment, resentment, and chagrin of the Jesuits.

     It was all very well for Lord Baltimore to lay down laws, but it was another thing for him to enforce them.  The distance between him and his province, making communication slow and uncertain, and always irregular, bred the feeling that much could be done in which the absent lord would never hear of at all, and at any rate, if they chose a course of action contrary to his laws, months would elapse before they could ever be repudiated.  And so it speedily became evident that it is one thing to give laws, and another to enforce them, when you are dealing with men who have their own purposes to serve.  Ignoring alike the dictates of prudence and the injunctions of Lord Baltimore, they began a contest for supremacy in Maryland which was to end in their own undoing.  And as the Jesuits chose to pursue a policy of aggression, they were overwhelmed by disaster which finally.  But only temporarily; like shooing blackbirds from your corn field, turn your back, and they always return.

     To purport the claim that only one organization in all the earth has the "truth" for man's salvation, and being an aristocratic member of that organization, sharing in the mission to extend that claim, makes for a very arrogant, bold, and aggressive person, transcending all others of their rights, human justice, and feelings.  Romanism had established herself in South America, setting up her so called "reductions" among the native Indians miniature socialized communistic compounds, becoming laboratories that developed today's communism and now Rome was bent and determined to plant a Roman Catholic colony among the English on the North American continent. Rome succeeded in her Maryland "glorious" undertaking, but not without a fight.  The sad thing with Protestantism is, they have only won battles.  Rome has all but won the war.

ENGLAND'S  BLACK CLOUDS

    Puritan forces were rapidly gaining power in England. The political sky was black with clouds. Every dry the king was becoming more unpopular. Threats of civil war began to be heard on all sides.  Cecilius Calvert sent his brother Leonard, governor of Maryland, anxious instructions for curbing or rather eliminating Jesuit aggression in the colony.  Leonard, not realizing the seriousness of the conditions in England, thinking Cecilius's actions were too radical, and also prompted by Jesuit influence, chose to ignore his brother's authority altogether.  Word of the Jesuits' doings and the trouble it was creating in the colony soon reached England.  In consequence of this agitation, on 26 March 1642, Cecilius Calvert was summoned to appear before the House of Lords to answer for the alleged misconduct of his officers in Maryland.  He cleared himself of the charges, but the incident drove home the fact that he would have to walk warily if he was to retain possession of his proprietary rights. Even the likelihood of his being involved in whatever hard fate that threatened the king.

     Another severe letter dated 23 November 1642, to his brother in Maryland, accompanied by gentlemen from England to give a verbal account of the gravity of the situation, was written and sent on its mission.  The seriousness and impact of the news when reaching Governor Leonard Calvert, so disturbed and alarmed him, that he rushed to England to get a firsthand account and personally counsel with his brother.  Already on 23 October 1642, war between the King's army and the Puritan forces had begun the terrible strife, which was in the end, 30 January 1649, to witness the beheading death of King Charles I.  Lord Baltimore Cecilius Calvert had every reason to begin fearing for his own life.  In the events lifting up Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans to supreme Power in England, it was a dangerous thing for a man to be suspected of encouraging Romanism.

COLONY REBELLION

     While Governor Leonard was in England, the smoldering fire existing in and around the Maryland colony burst into flame. The resentment of the Virginians in the way the territory of the Maryland colony was wrest from them, especially William Claborne, Virginia's Secretary of State, who keenly felt he was unjustly deprived of his Kent Island trading station and the manner its Protestant settlement was broken up;  the resentment of the Virginians having a Roman Catholic colony in their front yard; the escalating overbearing conduct and attitude of the Jesuits within the Maryland colony itself; were all emotional feelings brought to an igniting point when the news arrived from England of the remarkable successes of the Parliamentary forces. Anticipating the ultimate downfall of the king, Protestants saw that the hour of deliverance had come.   They would now look to it that Rome's dominion was at an end.  In England the Jesuits lay under a ban, and it was intolerable that in an English colony, and in defiance of English law, they should be permitted to conduct themselves as they had been doing.

     Leonard Calvert arrived from England during the midst of the trouble, but was powerless to bring order out of chaos, and before the end of the year--1644--William Clayborne had the supreme satisfaction of coming into possession of Kent Island. The following spring, St. Mary's, the seat of the Maryland government, was attacked, and without a struggle the city was captured; Lord Baltimore's authority in Maryland ceased.  The downfall of the proprietary government caused a panic among the Jesuits.  The more prudent sought safety in flight, recognizing that they had fallen upon evil times.  Even the governor fled the province.  However two priests, Jesuit Thomas Copley, the most guilty in fermenting strife and dissension, along with Jesuit Andrew White, were seized and confined and later sent in chains to England.  Both were convicted of teaching doctrines contrary to the laws of England and sent to prison, and both were later released.  Copley seems to have found his way back into Maryland while White, because of his age, was refused permission and died in Europe.

     The colonist's rebellion was over when Romanism was crushed. Their grievances not being against the Catholic people themselves, were handled much less harshly. But by the banishment of the Jesuits, and the overthrow of Roman influence, the colonists had accomplished their aims. Such a condition of affairs from the very beginning had been flagrant lawlessness, existing as it did in the face of the lord proprietaries initial injunctions and his often repeated protests, to say nothing of the charter to which Maryland owed her existence, and the statue law of England herself.

ONE HUNDRED YEAR STRUGGLE

     The "struggle" - the intense struggle, that was going on in England during those crucial one hundred years between 1603 and 1702, became the very years that England was establishing her American colonies.  And that struggle, the bloodshed, and oppression, during those years, and just previous to those years, where the events of Queen Mary, the Bartholomew massacre, the Spanish Armada, the Gunpowder Plot, the Thirty Years' War, and the Irish Massacre, either had or 'was' taking place had its direct impact on the thinking and the manner--of governments set up in the American colonies.  And you can thank God, whether you grasp the scope of that struggle or not, that when the American Constitution was formed, the founders adopted the English form of government.

     To cite just one example of that "struggle", consider the two forms of laws that ruled the people of Europe during that time.  One, "Canon Law", which regulated the Roman Catholic nations of Europe; the other; the "Common Law" of England.  In comparing one feature alone will reveal the stark differences between the two.  Under Roman Catholic Canon Law, a person was arrested, placed in prison indefinitely, left even to die there, never knowing the reason why, if the authorities so chose. Under English Common Law and understand that this was progressive as the voice of the people was heard, pressuring laws for human rights to be legislated - a habeas corpus was provided.  The word being Latin means, you have the body.

     In the English common law, habeas corpus was a writ directed to a person detaining another; commanding him to produce the imprisoned individual at a designated time and place.  Its primary purpose was to obtain prompt relief from illegal confinement or restraint.  Because of the ineffectiveness of habeas corpus in cases involving imprisonment by order of the Crown without cause or for political and religious reasons, Parliament in 1628 passed the Petition of Right.  The petition cited the portion of the Magna Charta which provided: "No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way destroyed; nor will we condemn him, nor will we convict him in prison, excepting by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the laws of the land".  When abuses still continued, Parliament passed the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.  This Act made the writ of habeas corpus "the most effective weapon yet devised for the protection of the liberty of the subject, and for a speedy trial of prisoners remanded to await trial".

     Now please pay close attention to the following words, quoting from the 1964 Encyclopedia Americana, volume S, page 514, under the heading of: Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church.  After reading it, there can be no question where anyone stands in the haughty arrogant eyes of Rome...

FOUR STUART KINGS

     To simplify the complex and confusing maze of intrigues and counter-intrigues during that one hundred years, let's just look at briefly the kings that reigned during that time.  Notice too, that these kings, through Margaret Tudor, who was the sister of King Henry VIII of England, who had married King James Stuart IV of Scotland, prided themselves with two royal blood lines.  King James Stuart VI of Scotland, later also became King James I of England, establishing the Stuart name on the English throne, thus uniting the two nations. (Scotland, you remember, was the nation the aristocratic Knights Templar had fled to for refuge.) So these kings, by their very nature and tradition that had been bred into them, felt, allegedly by 'divine right', to assert their royal authority over others.  It was their repressing the will of the people, trying to bring them primarily under the Roman Catholic Church rule or at least the Church of England rule, that kept them in constant conflict with Parliament.

     The first of these kings was James I, the great-great-grandson of Henry VIII of England.  He reigned from 1603-1625. His son, Charles I, then took the throne in 1625 and reigned until convicted of high treason.  His absolutist beliefs, ruling without a Parliament for over ten years, and his Roman Catholic sympathies, alienated the Puritan dominated Parliament.  He was forced to call a Parliament in 1640, which determined to curtail his powers. This led Charles I to engage his armies with the Parliamentary forces which began civil war in 1642. It ended by him being captured and later beheaded in 1649, with Oliver Cromwell raised up as lord protector of the Commonwealth, which means free state.

     What the people and the Parliament had done, the like of it had never been heard of in the world before.  Kings had killed each other often times enough; parricide, fratricide, assassination, this was 'their' privilege; but that a section of the people should rise up, requiring the king to give a moral account of himself to them, condemning him as a tyrant, traitor, murderer and enemy of his country; startled the world. It was as if a council of deer had decided to execute a jungle rogue lion--lions in distant jungles growled, it was against nature!

     The Puritans during the Cromwellian period, from 1647 till Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658, came fully into power.  And as the Civil War and Commonwealth succeeded the rule of Charles I, the debate about a "free church in a free state" increased in intensity; for Cromwell's army was full of men who believed in the direct relationship of the soul to God and the right of conscience in political and religious affairs.  They argued: the spiritual persuasion of Christ alone, and not the temporal ruler, is effective in cleansing men of heresy and error.  The consciences of common men became a new phenomenon in religion and politics; one that would not disappear. (That didn't die in the colonies)

     Yet there was one more thrust, the last attempt on a grand scale, called the "Restoration Era" , to force the English people into a "one" church mold.  You see folks, these people with their aristocratic mind-sets, never go away, never give up--never! Something like trying to stop a stream by putting a boulder in the middle of it; the stream can't go through it, so will go around it, over it or even under it, whatever it takes to get by--but it does get by... The next two kings were the second and third sons of executed King Charles I; his first born dying two hours after birth.  During the Cromwellian years, these sons had fled England, going to the European Continent.  After Oliver Cromwell's death in 1658, Royalists gained control of Parliament and mustered enough influence to get Parliament to extend an invitation to Charles II living in exile, to return as king.  He reigned from 1660-1685.  His brother, James II, who returned from exile with him, reigned after his brother's death, from 1685, till he had to flee again, in 1689.

     Charles II, returning from exile to succeed his father in 1660 after the death of Cromwell, reigned for twenty-five years. Charles II was a secret Catholic, but had sense enough to realize that his best course to keep the crown was to be conciliatory, showing moderation and tolerance.  However, due to the controlled Parliament favoring the Anglican Church, several stringent Acts were passed during his reign that reversed the Independent's cause and greatly oppressed the people.

     The Corporation Act of 1661 prevented a person from holding a local public office, and the Test Act of 1673, mainly directed at Roman Catholics, forbid a person to hold an office under the crown, unless proven in both cases, they were members of the Established Anglican Church of England.  The Conventicle Act of 1664, outlawed religious assemblies, other than the Church of England, of five or more persons outside a regular household.  And the Five-Mile Act of 1665, ordered dissenting ministers to remain at least five miles away from any place where they had ever preached and forbid their teaching at schools.  This series of harsh measures served to strengthen the Anglican Church against nonconformists, sending thousands to prison to languish and die.  These were the prison years of John Bunyan.  It also produced the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679.

     Rumors persisted that Charles II had made a secret treaty with King Louis XIV "the Sun King" of France, in which he had agreed to work to return Britain to the Roman Church, in exchange for a large sum of money. These rumors were indeed confirmed recently in 1988, when a signed copy of the actual agreement was found, showing that Charles II was to receive 1.2 million gold livres for his efforts to bring Britain back to Rome.  There is however, no record that he received the money.  Yet, King Charles II's true feelings did come out, when on his death bed and at his request, his brother, James II, brought a Roman Catholic priest up the back stairs to administer the last rites.

     After the death of Charles II in 1685, his brother, James II, came to the throne.  He was avowedly a Roman Catholic, and set in immediately, throwing all caution to the wind in his determination to restore the power of the Roman Catholic Church and make himself an absolute monarch.  He exempted Roman Catholics from the Test Act, offering payments to individuals in high places to convert; the chapel at Whitehall was opened for public Catholic worship; a papal nuncio was received, and favors were conferred on the Jesuits with two of their schools being opened in London, with Jesuit Edward Petre being appointed to the Privy Council, and both he and Jesuit John Warner becoming his confessors.   Further, James II found himself the supreme head of the Anglican Communion, and resolved to use his supremacy as a weapon for its overthrow.  All of this in less than the three years that he reigned.

     James II's reckless and ramrodding policy caused great alarm and distress among the English people; even among Catholics who feared later reprisals.   It brought all the anti-Roman sentiments together in a common cause.  Just a couple of years before, the same year James II took the throne, Louis XIV of France, revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed freedom of religion for French Protestants, and were now suddenly subject to renewed persecution and deportation.  Feelings ran high in England, spawning plots, schemes, and secret meetings, with the longest established secret society, Freemasonry, playing a major role.

     From an earlier marriage, (his first wife had died) James II had two daughters, Mary and Anne, who had been raised Protestant.  Mary, the oldest, had married her cousin, William of Orange, who was the leader of Protestant Dutch against the Catholic Louis XIV of France.  Together they were the strongest claimants to the English throne.  James II not having a son, it was assumed and anticipated that one or the other daughter would become his heir and that England would again have a Protestant sovereign.  With this hope, English people bided their time, tolerating, though reluctantly, wanting for James II to end his reign.

     Then like a thunder bolt out of the blue, it was announced that the queen had given birth to a son. To make matters worse, the king declared that the boy's education and upbringing would be in the care of the Jesuits.  Prudent Catholics and bristling Protestants came together.  Jesuit Edward Petre was accused of being the father--by a nun--saying the baby had been smuggled into the royal bedchamber in a warming pan.  The backlash from the oppressive Acts of Charles II, and now James II's unrelenting campaign to return England to Rome, jolted the English people to action.  Fearing another full-scale civil war, Parliament offered the throne to James's fervently anti-Catholic daughter; Mary, and her husband, William, prince of Orange. They accepted and on 5 November 1688, the Dutch prince became the new king of England who reigned until 1702.  It was acclaimed, the "Glorious Revolution".

     Without a fight, but with deep bitterness, James II went into exile once again in France, with Jesuit Edward Petre going with him.  This began the long and intense Stuart quest, bringing the nations of France, Ireland, and Scotland, against England, involving plots, executions, and battles, to reclaim the English throne for the house of Stuart.  They were called Jacobites, coming from the Latin word Jacobus, meaning James, who espoused the cause of James II, and his son, James III, known as the Old Pretender.   It lasted for fifty-eight years, till 1746, when they were effectively crushed at the battle of Culloden Moor.   It was during those years, that the aristocratic Jacobite cause produced their own brand of Catholic Scottish Templar Freemasonry, which we will look at in the next chapter.

     What we have just tightly covered in the last few paragraphs, was a cataclysm of English events that was to change forever her history and the history of the world; guaranteeing basic rights for the common man.  The great landmark and product of the Glorious Revolution was its Bill of Rights; giving protection for the "indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom". Laws also were passed by Parliament stating categorically that no Roman Catholic or spouse of a Roman Catholic could occupy the British throne.  The English Bill of Rights became an influence and inspiration to future governments all over the world, but especially to the forming of our own American Constitution and Bill of Rights. The Glorious Revolution represented the triumph of Parliament and the people over the tyranny of Catholicism and the crown.  It becomes obvious why the hierarchy of Rome wants to downplay and obscure this part of English history and hates everything it represents.  With this background of English history in mind, let's now return and fit it into the happenings of the Catholic Maryland colony...