ttlements, and at
different times armed expeditions were sent out against them; but
there was nothing like a war.

For sixteen years the only clergy in the colony were priests, who were
so zealous in their propaganda that nearly all the Protestants who
came in 1638 were converted to Catholicism and many later conversions
were made.[13] Nevertheless, the Catholic governor and council acted
up to the spirit of the instructions given by Baltimore to his brother
on the sailing of the first emigrants from the port of London, and
would permit no language tending to insult or breach of peace. Not
long after the arrival at St. Mary's a proclamation to this end was
issued, of which only two violations appear in the records; in both
cases the offenders were Roman Catholics, and they were arrested and
promptly punished.[14]

Baltimore would not even exempt the Jesuit priests in Maryland from
the ordinary laws as to lands and taxes, and by the "Conditions of
Plantations," published in 1648, he prohibited any society, temporal
or spiritual, from taking up land.[15] In 1643 his liberality carried
him so far as to induce him to extend, through Major Edward Gibbons,
an invitation to the Puritans of Massachusetts to emigrate to
Maryland, with a full assurance of "free liberty of religion"; but
Winthrop grimly writes, "None of our people had temptation that
way."[16]

In the year of this invitation the possibility of a new shuffle of the
political cards occurred through the breaking out of the war so long
brewing in England between the king and Parliament. The struggle of
party made itself strongly felt in Maryland, where, among the
Protestants, sympathy with Parliament was supplemented by hatred of
Catholics. In 1643, Governor Leonard Calvert repaired to England,
where he received letters of marque from the king at Oxford
commissioning him to seize ships belonging to Parliament. Accordingly,
when, three months later, in January, 1644, Captain Richard Ingle
arrived in his ship at St. Mary's and uttered some blatant words
against the king, he was arrested by Acting Governor Brent, for
treason. The charges were dismissed by the grand jury as unfounded,
but Brent treated Ingle harshly, and fined and exiled Thomas
Cornwallis for assisting the captain in escaping.[17]

In September, 1644, when Calvert returned to Maryland, there were
strong symptoms of revolt, which came to a head when Ingle came back
to St. Mary's with a commission fro