The Protestant Revolution also saw the effective end of Maryland's early experiments with religious toleration, as Catholicism was outlawed and Catholics forbidden from holding public office.

From the 1660s onwards, the price of tobacco, the staple crop of Maryland and its chief source of export income, began a long slide, causing economic hardship especially among the poor.

Calvert initially agreed to this plan, but came to realize that the burden of the stint would fall chiefly upon his poorest subjects, who comprised "the generality of the province".

Eventually, he vetoed the bill, much to the disgust of the Virginians,[1] though in the end Nature provided a stint of her own in the form of a hurricane which devastated the 1667 tobacco crop.

His political enemies took the opportunity of his absence to launch a scathing attack on the proprietorial government, publishing a pamphlet in 1676 titled A Complaint from Heaven with a Hue and Crye ... out of Maryland and Virginia, listing numerous grievances and in particular complaining of the lack of an established church.

The Anglican minister John Yeo wrote scathingly to the Archbishop of Canterbury, complaining that Maryland was "in a deplorable condition" and had become "a sodom of uncleanliness and a pesthouse of iniquity".

His written response illustrates the difficulties facing his administration; Calvert wrote that Maryland settlers were "Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, and Quakers, those of the Church of England as well as the Romish being the fewest ...It would be a most difficult task to draw such persons to consent unto a Law which shall compel them to maintaine ministers of a contrary perswasion to themselves".

Fendall was tried, convicted, fined forty thousand pounds of tobacco and exiled, but his co-conspirator Coode successfully escaped retribution.

Unfortunately Talbot proved to be a poor choice, stabbing to death a Royal customs official on board his ship in the Patuxent River, and thereby ensuring that his uncle suffered immediate difficulties on his return to London.

In November 1688, Joseph set about offending local opinion by lecturing his Maryland subjects on morality, adultery and the divine right of kings, lambasting the colony as "a land full of adulterers".

Sensibly, Calvert moved quickly to support the new regime, sending a messenger to Maryland to proclaim the new King and Queen.

[citation needed] Meanwhile, Maryland Protestants, by now a substantial majority in the colony, feeding on rumors from England and fearing Catholic plots, began to organize rebellion against the proprietary government.

Governor Joseph did not improve the situation by refusing to convene the assembly and, ominously, recalling weapons from storage, ostensibly for repair.

[7] Darnall, heavily outnumbered, later wrote: "Wee being in this condition and no hope left of quieting the people thus enraged, to prevent effusion of blood, capitulated and surrendered.

In the early 18th century Marylanders who "should utter any profane words concerning the Holy Trinity" would find themselves "bored through the tongue and fined twenty pounds" for a first offence.