USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The Protestant Revolution of 1689, sometimes called Coode’s Rebellion after one of its leaders, John Coode, took place in the Province of Maryland when Puritans, by then a substantial majority in the colony, revolted against the proprietary government led by the Roman Catholic Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore.

Detailed explanation-2: -Warfare intensified after the Catholic Church began the Counter-Reformation in 1545 against the growth of Protestantism. The conflicts culminated in the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated Germany and killed one third of its population, a mortality rate twice that of World War I.

Detailed explanation-3: -Although the majority of the population was Protestant, Catholics retained control of the proprietary government and reinstated the Toleration Act. At least according to some Protestants, Maryland’s religious liberty was a farce.

Detailed explanation-4: -Anglican and later Puritan newcomers quickly came to outnumber the early Catholic settlers. Thus, by 1649 when the law was passed, the colonial assembly was dominated by Protestants, and the law was in effect an act of Protestant tolerance for Catholics, rather than the reverse.

Detailed explanation-5: -Maryland’s religious history is unique in colonial British North America. We largely remember Maryland as the Catholic colony that embraced religious toleration and religious freedom, in contrast to New England’s stodgily Puritan establishment or Virginia’s scattered Anglican church.