Approximately one in eight
of other Marylanders were fellows in that faith. Another eighth of the
people held with the Church of England. The rest, the mass of the folk,
were dissenters from that Church. And now all the Protestant elements
together -- the Quakers excepted -- solidified into political and religious
opposition to the Proprietary's rule. Baltimore, still in England, had
immediately, upon the accession of William and Mary, dispatched orders to
the Maryland Council to proclaim them King and Queen. But his messenger
died at sea, and there was delay in sending another. In Maryland the
Council would not proclaim the new sovereigns without instructions, and it
was even rumored that Catholic Maryland meant to withstand the new order.
In effect the old days were over. The Protestants, Churchmen and Dissenters
alike, proceeded to organize under a new leader, one John Coode. They
formed "An Association in arms for the defense of the Protestant religion,
and for asserting the right of King William and Queen Mary to the Province
of Maryland and all the English Dominions." Now followed a confused time of
accusations and counter-accusations, with assertions that Maryland
Catholics were conspiring with the Indians to perpetrate a new St.
Bartholomew massacre of Protestants, and hot counter-assertions that this
is "a sleveless fear and imagination fomented by the artifice of some
ill-minded persons." In the end Coode assembled a force of something less
than a thousand men and marched against St.
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