Meanwhile, in London, to the astonishment of the local Protestants, Lord
Baltimore won over Cromwell. Cromwell empowered Baltimore to reinstate
his officials; he did, and they threatened to charge the Protestants with sedi-
tion. So each side mustered its forces: the Protestant leader called his oppo-
nents “Papists and other desperate and bloody fellows,” and Baltimore’s
agent derided the Protestants’ “barbarous and bloudy actions.”
Angry shouts quickly turned to musket shots. About 250 of Baltimore’s
men marched on the capital, which was still held by the Protestants. The
Protestants rallied their forces, which were somewhat smaller than
Baltimore’s, and enlisted help from the Golden Lion,an armed merchantman
that happened to be anchored nearby. The guns and crew of the Golden Lion
swung the balance. Baltimore’s force was routed with a loss of about fifty
wounded or killed. The civil war that convulsed Maryland was a small-scale
version of the one that had racked England. Over the next few years, the
Protestant proportion of the community grew larger, reaching a ratio of
about twenty to one.
In 1685, the Catholic duke of York became King James II. Protestants
feared the advent of a new Counter-Reformation with the English monar-
chy allied to Louis XIV of Catholic France. In a widely discussed local
affair, the governor, a Catholic nephew of Lord Baltimore, stabbed to death
a Protestant customs collector. In the already poisoned atmosphere of reli-
gious strife, Baltimore sent over in 1688 a governor who astonished the
assembly not only by proclaiming the antiquated doctrine of the divine
right of kings but also by charging that Maryland “is full of Adulterers...
as I hear some do not only abroad but even at home under their wives’
noses, where strumpets rule and the wives obey to the scandal of all honest
and good men.” It was not, perhaps, the most tactful maiden speech for an
incoming governor.
With these and other goads driving them, and upon hearing of the fall
of James II and the arrival of his Protestant successors, William and Mary,
the Protestant community of Maryland formed an “Association in arms for
the defence of the Protestant religion and for asserting the right of King
William and Queen Mary to the province of Maryland.” Since Baltimore
issued no instructions to recognize the new monarchs, Protestants feared a
backstairs deal like the one Cromwell had made with an earlier Lord
“Mother England” Loses Touch 139