begun to hope that William and Mary would succeed
James to the throne of England. This event intensified the general
discontent, because of the consolidation of New York with New England
and the abridgment of their rights, and the people were ready to rebel
at almost any moment, especially as Andros had rendered himself
particularly obnoxious.

Like the other colonies, Maryland was shaken by the revolution in
England, in 1688, and, for a while, experienced deep sorrows. The
democratic ideas, which, for several years, had been spreading over the
provinces, could not reconcile the rule of a lord proprietor with the
true principles of republicanism. Even when Charles Calvert went to
England after the death of his father, signs of political discontent
were conspicuous in Maryland. In 1678, the general assembly, influenced
by the popular feeling, established the right of suffrage--"casting of a
vote for rulers"--on a broad basis. On the return of Charles, in 1681,
he annulled this act and, by an arbitrary ordinance, resisted the right
of freemen owning fifty acres of land, or personal property of the value
of forty pounds sterling. This produced great disquietude, and
Ex-Governor Fendall planned an insurrection for the purpose of
abolishing the proprietorship and establishing an independent republican
government. The king was induced to issue orders that all the offices of
the government in Maryland should be filled by Protestants alone; and
so, again, the Roman Catholics were deprived of their political rights.

Lord Baltimore went to England again, in 1684, leaving the government of
his province in charge of several deputies under the nominal
governorship of his infant son. There he found his rights in great
peril; but before the matter could be brought to a direct issue by the
operation of a writ of _quo warranto_, King James was driven from the
throne, and Protestant William and Mary ascended it. Lord Baltimore
immediately acquiesced in the political change. On account of his
instructions to his deputies to proclaim the new monarchs being delayed
in their transmission, he was charged with hesitancy; and a restless
spirit named Coode, an associate of Fendall in his insurrectionary
movements--"a man of loose morals and blasphemous speech"--excited the
people by the cry of "a popish plot!" He was the author of a false story
put in circulation, that the local magistrates in Maryland and the Roman
Catholics there had engaged