The Calverts In Maryland

While the region was known to many 16th-century navigators, the first actual exploration was conducted by Captain John Smith in 1608. A trading post was established on Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay by William Claiborne of Virginia in 1631. In 1632 a charter for the province of Maryland was granted by Charles I of England to Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore. (The charter was originally granted to Calvert's father, the first Lord Baltimore, who died before it became official.) The first settlement under this charter was made at St. Marys City, at the mouth of the Potomac River, in 1634. Claiborne, at the urging of the Virginia Assembly, refused to acknowledge Maryland jurisdiction. Kent Island was then occupied by settlers from Maryland. In retaliation Claiborne seized St. Marys City, holding it during 1644–46.

Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, provided a refuge for his coreligionists, but also welcomed without distinction all who joined the colony. Until 1649 there was complete religious freedom. Virginia-exiled Puritans moved into Maryland and established the town of Providence (later Annapolis). After their arrival, the General Assembly passed an Act Concerning Religion in 1649. The first part of this act affirmed the principles of religious freedom previously practiced but it went on to impose penalties on non-Trinitarians. This law has been called the “Toleration Act,” but actually it limited the practice of religious freedom that had preceded its enactment.

Growing tension between Catholics and Protestants led a group of Virginians, Claiborne included, to seize control of Maryland in 1654, during the rule of Cromwell's Commonwealth in England.

The Calverts again held authority during the Restoration in England, but after the Stuarts were deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Maryland was made a royal colony. The capital was moved from St. Marys City to Annapolis in 1694. In 1715 the Calverts, who by this time had become Protestant, were again put in charge. They retained control of the colony until the Revolutionary War.

Western Maryland was the scene of many frontier raids during the French and Indian War (1754–63). A long-standing boundary dispute with Pennsylvania was settled with the establishment in 1767 of Mason and Dixon's Line. In the pre-Revolutionary period resentment against the taxes imposed by Great Britain was so strong in Maryland that in 1774 a ship loaded with tea was burned and sunk at Annapolis.