that the Proprietor took sides with the Burgesses against the Council. In 1670 the Governor neglected to summon a few of the Delegates who had been elected to the Assembly, probably because he thought they would oppose his will. When he was asked why he had done this, he could give no good explanation. In this way he obtained a house of Burgesses not too much opposed to his wishes; and therefore, instead of dissolving, as was usual at the end of the year, he adjourned the Assembly, and thus kept it alive until 1676. In the meantime Cecilius Calvert had died in 1675, and Charles, who thus became Lord Proprietor, went to England in the early part of the following year, leaving Thomas Notley as Governor. Cecilius Calvert Died One chief cause of complaint, not only in Maryland and Virginia, but in all the colonies, was the Navigation Act. This Act decreed that no goods should be imported into or exported from the colonies except in ship's built either in England or the colonies and manned by British seamen; and that no sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, and other products of the colonies should be shipped anywhere except to England or to one of her colonies. The Act was intended to injure Dutch shipping, but its real effect was to injure the trade of the colonies. The Maryland and Virginia planters had sold a large part of their tobacco crops to the Dutch, and now that they could do so no longer the tobacco was left on their hands, or else had to be sold to English merchants at a ruinously low price. At the same time they had to pay more for the goods which they imported from England than they used to pay to the Dutch merchants. In 1662 it was proposed Bacon's Rebellion and its Influence on Maryland Affairs, 1676. that no tobacco should be planted in Maryland or Virginia during the next year, and in 1666 such an agreement actually was entered into by Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, but it failed because Lord Baltimore vetoed the Act. The discontent at length grew so fierce that it led, in 1676, in Virginia, to a rebellion at whose head was a young man named Nathaniel Bacon. Maryland seemed about to follow her sister colony in revolt. Bacon had many sympathizers in Maryland, and two of them, named Davis and Pate, gathering together a force in Calvert County, refused to disband even when Governor Notley promised that their demands should be laid before the next Assembly. Matters were becoming alarming when the rebellion in Virginia came to a sudden end with the death of Bacon. The revolt in Maryland collapsed at once. Davis and Pate were taken and hanged, and peace was restored. Trouble between the Proprietor and the King. A few years later another cause of trouble arose, this time between the Proprietor and the King. In 1680 a certain George Talbot, an Irishman by birth and a kinsman of Lord Baltimore, received the grant of a large tract of land on the Susquehanna River. Four years later, when Lord Baltimore again went to England and left his minor son Benedict Leonard as Governor of the colony, Talbot was put at the head of a commission of Deputy Governors to attend to the business of the office. We have seen that by the charter no taxes could be laid in Maryland by either King or Parliament, but this did not apply to customhouse duties. In collecting these duties the officers of the King frequently came into collision with the Proprietor's government, and there was much misunderstanding between them. In the year 1684 a small ship of the King's navy was lying at St. Mary's, and on board of her, drinking with the captain, was a certain Christopher Rousby, one of the customs officers. Talbot went on board the ship, and in the quarrel which soon followed stabbed Rousby to the heart. The captain of the vessel carried Talbot off to Virginia and handed him over to the Governor. There he was imprisoned and would surely have been put to death had he not been rescued by his brave wife. She, with only two followers and in mid-winter, sailed the whole length of Chesapeake Bay in a small boat and carried him off to his manor on the Susquehanna. He was pursued immediately, and so hot was the chase that at one time, it is said, he had to hide in a cave on the banks of the river. His only food was the wild fowl brought him by two of his trained hawks. Before long Talbot gave himself up. He was tried and found guilty in 1685, but was saved from death by Lord Baltimore who obtained his pardon from the King. This incident, and the charges which the King's officers were constantly making that they were hindered in collecting the customs duties and that the King was being defrauded of his dues, led to ill-will towards the Proprietary government on the part of the crown. This was the state of affairs when in 1688 King James II., who was a Catholic, abdicated his throne and was succeeded by the Protestants William and Mary. Lord Baltimore at once sent off a messenger to Maryland telling the Council to proclaim William and Mary; but his messenger died on the voyage, and before a second could arrive in the colony trouble had come. All the other of 1689. colonies were proclaiming the new rulers of England, but the Council of Maryland still delayed. Many of the colonists thought this delay was part of a plot by the Catholics in favor of the deposed King The Revolution James. At length, in July, 1689, a certain. John Coode, a wicked and immoral man, at the head of seven hundred armed followers, drove the Council out of St. Mary's, captured them, and sent word of what he had done to King William in the name of the Protestants of Maryland, asking the King to take charge of the government. Associated with Coode were Nehemiah Blackiston, collector of customs; Kenelm Cheseldyn, speaker of the House; and Colonel Henry Jowles. These men falsely accused the "Papists" of entering into a plot with the Indians to murder all the Protestants in the colony. The King was willing enough to take possession of the colony, and accordingly, in August, 1691, sent out Sir Lionel Copley to be the first royal Governor. The Proprietor no longer had any part in the government of his colony. All the officers were appointed by the crown, and the laws passed by the Assembly were sent to the King for approval instead of to Lord Baltimore. However, all the rent of land was still paid to Lord Baltimore, and he still was the owner of lands not yet granted to settlers. Moreover he still received the proceeds of a tax on exported tobacco which had been laid for him: this by order of the King, although the Assembly objected to paying it. Maryland becomes a Royal Colony, 1691. The change of government brought about anything. but good times for the Marylanders. Everybody, rich and poor alike, was at once taxed forty pounds of tobacco per poll (i. e., per head) to support the Church of Eng |