their arrival in Maryland, we find George Fox lecturing to large assemblages in that very meeting-house which the Puritans in their original fervor had built, but which was now in the possession of another sect. Those who, ten years before, were the staunchest of Puritans, had now become zealous Quakers. This change of doctrine, although necessarily of slow growth, seems to have been wide-spread and to have affected the most prominent members of the Providence colony.

FENDALL'S CONSPIRACY.

Gov. Fendall took the opportunity when affairs in England, preceding the Restoration, were in an unsettled condition to attempt the overthrow of Baltimore's power in Maryland and establish himself as Proprietor. In this he was joined by many of Baltimore's trusted friends, who were either fascinated with the offers which Fendall made of lands and money, or who deemed themselves unjustly treated by the Proprietor and desired a change of masters. Fendall's plan was to resign the government into the hands of certain members of the Council and Assembly, who were in turn to invest him with power and form themselves into a Commonwealth of Maryland.

The second Commonwealth of Maryland failed to find that support in the new king Charles II. that the first had found in Cromwell. Orders were received from England to pardon those who had been led astray, but from this general amnesty Fendall and one or two of the Puritans were excluded; Calvert's revenge upon the latter had yet to be satisfied. He wrote, "yea, if there be need you may proceed against them by Court Martial Law and upon no terms pardon Fendall, so much as for life. No, if you can do it without hazarding the Province to pardon so much as for life any of those that sat in the Council of War at Ann Arundel and concurred to the sentence of death against Mr. Eltonhead or other of my honest friends murdered then and there, and who are engaged

in this second rebellion." Fendall was pardoned; but Fuller was outlawed, proclaimed an incendiary and violent person, and compelled to live in seclusion until the storm had passed

over.

BEGINNINGS OF ANNAPOLIS.

The plantations of Providence, though increasing and concentrating, were still scattered and unprotected. A letter from Mr. Lloyd, dated June 28, 1662, gives us some idea of the precarious conditions of the Puritans' homes by reason of Indian marauders. He said, "nightly whooping and shooting is heard and cattle coming freighted [frightened] home." Along the banks and at the mouth of the Severn River the farms were more numerous than elsewhere and gradually there, around their meeting-house, little homes began to spring up, the nucleus of the town of Ann Arundel or Severn-the Annapolis that was to be. The interest of these former rulers of Maryland in her welfare was unabated. Yearly the men of Severn petition that "the Laws of the Province may be inscribed in a neat, fair hand and sent to Severn." They made a strong endeavor to have the capital of the Province moved to Severn as a more central position and active neighborhood. Indeed, several offers were made by private persons from the county to build at their own expense a capitol and Governor's mansion, to be paid for when the people chose. These offers were declined, but they portray the growing importance of the Puritan settlement and prepared the people of St. Mary's for the change which would sooner or later follow.

Acts of the Assembly to encourage the building of towns caused several to spring up within the bounds of Ann Arundel, but all had lingering, short, feeble lives, and have left few traces of their existence. In 1689 Ann Arundel

'Council Records.

County was reported "as being the richest and most populous" of the whole Province, and the county seat upon the banks of the Severn began to assume some importance. Under the administration of Governor Nicholson in 1694, Severn received the name of "Annapolis." The irregular clusters of small houses gave way to regular streets and to government buildings. The quondam religious centre of the Province now became the political head. St. Mary's, shorn of its glory as a colonial capital, was slowly overrun by tobacco fields, and, in a few years, the town was dead. By the close of the century, fifty years from its settlement, the county of Providence stood at the head of Maryland affairs, but it was no longer Puritan. Its history now blends with that of the Province at large. Puritan characteristics become yearly less capable of recognition and the history of Puritan founders fades away from the consciousness of Puritan descendants.

IMPORTANCE OF THE PURITAN FACTOR IN MARYLAND HISTORY.

Let us consider the importance of the Puritan foundation to the later history of Maryland. Those early but often effectual strivings for liberty in worship, in speech, and in government, which fill the Puritan annals of Maryland, were but local expressions of a great popular movement which was and is stirring the civilized world. This little band of Puritan exiles represented in Virginia and in Maryland what the Puritan masses represented in England in 1648; what the third estate represented in France in 1789; and what the revolutionary classes of all nations represent in their various uprisings, whether religious, political or economic. The desire of those who possess neither wealth, title, nor privilege, is to participate in some way in their own government and to resist oppression by a ruling class. That system of titled nobility, of manorial custom, of a landed proprietor over and

above all- a virtual king within his realm of Maryland— that system which Lord Baltimore had endeavored to establish here, the Puritans, with their democratic ideas and selfgoverning institutions, crushed to powder. Lord Baltimore had conceived of a great realm in Maryland, based upon feudal principles. He was to be its feudal lord. His dependents and favorites, with their vast tracts of land sub-let on feudal terms or worked by servant labor, were to form his feudal courts, enforce tithes and servile obedience. The Puritans of Maryland, like their brethren in England, resisted. When no regard was paid to their petitions, when rulers forgot their promises, they set their strength against royal, aristocratic, and oppressive institutions and overthrew them altogether. They built up a government for Maryland upon more thoroughly democratic principles. As Parliament resisted the tyranny of James I. and Charles I., so in the Assembly of Maryland we see Puritan antagonism to oppressive acts of the Proprietary and of his Privy Council.

DRIFT TOWARD DEMOCRACY.

Perhaps at no time in its history did the Lower House of the Province of Maryland make such a desperate attempt to control the administration as in 1660. That branch then conceived that not only the law-making but also the judicial power belonged to the people and by their will was vested in the House of Delegates. This principle was upheld by Fendall, then Governor. The Council, much against their will, was compelled to sit with the Burgesses. This triumph was of course short-lived. The day of retribution for democratic audacity eventually came. Many times the Burgesses complained against the arrogance of the Council and against their own exclusion from the administration of the Province. Again, in 1661, the Puritan members of the Council resisted the establishment of a mint by the Proprietor, claiming that the prerogative of coining money belonged to royalty and did

not appertain to the powers of Lord Baltimore. But the act passed over their votes.' While the Puritans were in power they adopted a purely democratic system for legislation. The two Houses sat as one. Quaker principles increased this democratic spirit. Every man was to be a brother and an equal of every other. Those practices and theories, radical though they may have been, served an historical end; they curbed the growing tendency to concentrate the functions of state in an hereditary ruler and in his Privy Council,—the Proprietor and his appointees. Maryland always was democratic in law and to a great extent in fact; but the offices of Governor, Council, Provincial Court, Minor Court justices, sheriffs, bailiffs, secretaries, surveyors, and inn-keepers, were all within the appointing power of the Proprietor. Among the men of Severn, democratic principles had full sway. Thence they went forth conquering and to conquer the whole Province.

POLITICAL PARTIES.

The growth of political parties within the colony was not peculiar to Maryland. Virginia and New England each passed through the same phases and each fostered the growth of political opinion. The animating impulse of the seventeenth century was toward reform in church and state, toward religious and political freedom. Together Protestantism and popular rights struggled with Catholicism and absolute monarchy. The American colonies, the children of a common English parentage, imitated the mother state in all her phases of party strife. Party spirit did more for civil liberty among the North Atlantic colonies during the reign of the Stuarts and the Commonwealth than during the suc

For coining Maryland money Lord Baltimore was arrested by Act of the Council in England. His dies, stamps, &c., were confiscated in October 1659; but two years later he began anew coinage for Maryland and was not hindered by the English authorities under Charles II.