Note 357 — Chapter XI
Reading edition
"King William, impatient of judicial forms, by his own act constituted Maryland a royal government. The arbitrary act was sanctioned by a legal opinion from Lord Holt. The Church of England was established as the religion of the state.... In the land which Catholics had opened to Protestants, the Catholic inhabitant was the sole victim to Anglican intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly.... No Catholic might teach the young.... The disfranchisement of the proprietary Lord Baltimore related to his creed, not to his family. To recover the inheritance of authority, Benedict, the son of the proprietary, renounced the Catholic Church for that of England. The persecution never crushed the faith of the humble colonists."—Bancroft, vol. iii., p. 33.