If there is one thing you should probably know about the religious conflicts which swept across Europe throughout the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it was not a great time to be the wrong religion in the wrong place. Not only did you face persecution and harassment from the religious majority for not praying to god in just the right way, there was a very real chance of having all of your property seized or just ending up plain old murdered. In England, one of the more persecuted group was Catholics, who were not only persecuted by the dominant Anglican church, but also the even more hardcore Puritans, who themselves were also persecuted by the Anglicans. Anyways, after seeing the success of the Puritans in New England, the Catholic Lord of Baltimore went to the king of England with a plan to create a similar Catholic colony. The king, pretty down with the idea given fewer Catholics around meant less arguing with the English parliament about them, agreed as long as the new colony was named after his wife. Hence was born the colony of Maryland.
In 1632 the first 300 settlers departed for Maryland aboard two ships. The settlers consisted of about 17 upper class Catholic families and a couple hundred indentured servants to see to their needs. After a couple uneventful months at sea, the two ships landed in Chesapeake Bay and the colonists set about to building themselves a new home, purchasing land from a local Lenape tribe. The Lenape were more than happy to see the English settlers. They were in conflict with the powerful Susquehannock Confederacy further inland, and they hoped that trade with the English might give them an edge. Plus, what was to become Maryland was a bit of a swampy shithole, so it wasn’t really all that big of a deal to hand it over. However, the swampy soil proved perfect for growing tobacco, and the new colony quickly became profitable. So profitable in fact that despite regular outbreaks of yellow fever and malaria, which made the average life expectancy significantly lower than in other colonies, the population was nearly 5,000 by 1650, most of whom were indentured servants who worked the fields while the wealthy landowners raced horses, played cards, and other such rich asshat hobbies.
Maryland was somewhat unique compared to other English colonies, given it was technically all owned by the Lord of Baltimore, but otherwise it was fairly similar to the rest with an appointed governor and elected legislative assembly running things. Though originally supposed to be a Catholic refuge, in practice it was more of a hodge podge of various religious types. However, the existence of a so-called Catholic colony in no way pleased the Puritans, who saw the New World specifically as their promised land. This general sense of hostility was little helped in 1638, when Maryland forcefully removed a Puritan trading post from an island in Chesapeake Bay. From Maryland’s perspective, this had less to do with religion, and more to do with the fact that the traders were selling guns to the native tribes in the local area, who were undergoing a bit of turmoil due to a pandemic sweeping through the area, killing off around half of them. Around this same time, Sweden built Fort Christina on the Delaware River, from which they happily began selling guns to the Susquehannock, who in turn used them to attack the Lenape. Not really wanting to trade the friendly Lenape for the less friendly Susquehannock, the colonists in Maryland fought on behalf of their allies from 1642 until 1644, until a combined force of Susquehannock and Swedes kicked their asses, scattering the Maryland militia across the countryside.
This turn of events created an opening that was quickly taken advantage of by the Puritans, who were still not happy about having Catholics in the New World, especially given recent events. The English Civil War had begun in 1642, pitting supporters of the English parliament against supporters of the king. While the colony of Virginia was solidly on the royalist side, the Puritans were not, and as a result Virginia passed a law making Anglicism the official religion of the colony. Not exactly feeling welcome, the Puritans living in Virginia founded a new colony in Maryland, which welcomed them with the ideal of religious tolerance. This proved to be a mistake given the moment the Maryland militia was scattered by the Swedes and Susquehannock in 1644, the Puritans seized control, beating up Catholics, forcing priests to return to England, and generally just being righteous dicks doing whatever the hell they felt like. The governor of Maryland was only able to regain control two years later with the help of the Virginia militia.
In 1649, the English Civil War ended with the king of England getting his head chopped off and the foundation of the English Commonwealth under the control of the Puritan Oliver Cromwell. The Puritans in Maryland celebrated by seizing control of the colony again, setting up a new government which outlawed both Catholicism and Anglicism, and burning down all of the Catholic churches. The governor of Maryland again went to Virginia for help, but finding them less than willing to do so, he instead raised up a militia of colonists in Maryland who were tired of the Puritan shenanigans. In response, the Puritans raised up their own militia, and the two sides met in 1655 at the Battle of the Severn, a rather sorry affair that left 19 people dead and the Puritans still firmly in control. They would remain in control until 1658, when to their utter surprise Oliver Cromwell himself ordered them to quit being a bunch of jackasses and handed control of the colony back to the authority of the Lord of Baltimore.
Despite all of the general chaos and rampant swamp diseases, Maryland continued to flourish throughout this period, its population reaching nearly 9,000 by 1660, the same year the English Commonwealth fell apart and the old king’s son was crowned the new king. The Lord of Baltimore retained control of Maryland until 1688, when the Glorious Revolution ushered in a new set of hardcore Protestant rulers in England. Soon after, the Puritans again forcefully seized control of Maryland and outlawed Catholicism in the colony, a law that was not rescinded until the Revolutionary War nearly a century later.
