The second son of Irish Catholic parents, Carroll was educated in France as a lawyer before returning to England, where he pursued the first steps in a legal career.

Carroll supported Charles Calvert, 3rd Baron Baltimore, the colony's Catholic proprietor, in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the Protestant majority from gaining political control over Maryland.

Following the overthrow of the Calvert proprietorship and the subsequent exclusion of Catholics from colonial government, Carroll turned his attention to owning slave plantations, law, business, and various offices in the proprietor's remnant organization.

[3] With Grace's support, Carroll was able to attend school in France—at Lille and at the University of Douai—where he studied the humanities, philosophy, and civil and canon law.

[5] According to family tradition, Carroll secured a position as clerk to William Herbert, 1st Marquess of Powis, an English nobleman who was one of two Catholic peers in the court of James II of England.

[6] According to Carroll family tradition, Powis told his new clerk that he believed King James was receiving bad advice related to the religious turmoil in England.

[8] Powis may have encouraged Carroll to emigrate to Maryland with the hope that the younger man's career would come to greater fulfillment in a place with less religious conflict than England at the time.

En route, Carroll changed his family motto from In fide et in bello forte (strong in faith and war) to Ubicumque cum libertate (anywhere so long as there be freedom).

[10] Carroll arrived in Maryland just as long-standing economic, religious, and political tensions between the poorer Protestant majority and the wealthier and more powerful Catholic minority were reaching a head.

[11] By the late 17th century, Maryland's economy was suffering from the effects of price fluctuations on the world market of its main cash crop, tobacco.

[11] Furthermore, the new Governor, William Joseph, who arrived in the colony just before Carroll, immediately entered into an adversarial relationship with the Protestant-dominated lower house of the assembly.

Into this powder keg came the news that England's Glorious Revolution had taken place; the Catholic King James II had been deposed and replaced with the Protestant William of Orange.

[12] In response to this cancellation and rumors of an anti-Protestant alliance between Catholics and Native Americans, Protestant settlers formed an association to defend themselves.

He was jailed twice for insulting the new colonial leaders, including Governor Lionel Copley, who accused Carroll of, "uttering several mutinous and seditious speeches".

[22] In February 1693 or 1694, Carroll remarried, this time to the 15-year-old daughter of Colonel Henry Darnall, Charles Calvert's chief agent in the colony.

[25] After 1706, Carroll and his family resided on two properties, a town house built in the new colonial capital of Annapolis and the plantation called Dougheregan in modern-day Howard County.

Emboldened by this turn of events, and with support from a number of prominent Maryland Catholic families, Carroll attempted to gain government office in the state.

Hart described Carroll as: a professed Papist, and the first fomentor of our late Disturbances, who having acquired a large estate in the Province by the offices he formerly employed, and his practice in Law...must needs add the Ambition of Rule to his former Felicity.

Carroll began to act in the capacity authorized by the proprietor's commission, and Hart turned to the upper house of the colonial legislature for relief.

[34] Rejecting Carroll's arguments in support of his right to hold government offices, the assembly resisted his attempts to exercise the commission and, near the end of 1716, passed a series of laws confirming and restricting the oath requirements for officeholders, which were anti-Catholic by intent.

There is no evidence that Hart was accurate, but the assembly passed stricter anti-Catholic laws in 1718, including disfranchisement, stripping Catholic males of the right to vote.