Province of Maryland

The Province of Maryland was an English and later British colony in North America, founded as a proprietary palatinate. In 1632 Charles I granted the territory to Cecil Calvert, second Baron Baltimore, whose father George had long sought a refuge for Catholics in the New World. The first settlers arrived in 1634 and established St. Mary's City on a peninsula in Chesapeake Bay; it remained the capital until 1695, when the seat of government moved to Annapolis. Maryland's charter gave Lord Baltimore sweeping powers, and the colony became an early experiment in religious toleration, though Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics and Quakers contended for control in its first decades. Tobacco became the basis of the economy and of a society built on indentured labour and, increasingly, enslaved Africans. In 1689, after the Glorious Revolution, John Coode's rebellion removed the Catholic Lord Baltimore from power; the Calvert family regained authority in 1715 after Charles Calvert declared himself a Protestant. Maryland joined the other colonies in resisting British measures and in 1776 declared independence, becoming one of the original thirteen states.