Volume 57, Preface 54 View pdf image (33K) |
liv Introduction. alty for running away. Finally the higher court rebelled, and at the December, 1668, session entered the following order “Severall persons having brought to Court theire servts To have theire ages Judg'd was refused to be downe by the Justices it being Bussiness belonging to the County Court and not to the Pro- vinciall Court” (p. 358). RELIGIOUS AFFAIRS. Following the restoration of Charles II, religious disputes and outbreaks of intolerance in Maryland were infrequent, although it would be folly to assume that this quiet was more than superficial. In this record we find occasional references to churches and chapels, to Roman Catholic priests, and church holdings, and to an act of hoodlumism against a Catholic chapel. Captain Luke Gardner of St. Mary's County, at the June, 1667, court, filed an account upon the estate of Robert Cole of St. Clement's Bay, St. Mary's County, a Roman Catholic, showing payments by him of 250 pounds of tobacco for “Church Levies”, and of his receiving two payments to the estate for “the building of the Church” of 532 and of 57 pounds of tobacco for the benefit of the orphans. There is also included an item of 60 pounds of tobacco received for “a Gunn Stocke Broke in the march”, indicating that he had served in an expedition against the Indians (p. 206). Although Cole was a Roman Catholic it looks as if he had paid levies in St. Mary's County for the Established Church, but whether it was upon a Protestant or Catholic chapel that he worked is not disclosed. In a deed dated December 1, 1666, from George Reynolds to Thomas Covant to a hundred acre tract called “The Fox”, Covant agrees to make cer- tain payments at the “abode of him the said George Reynolds neare the Church or chappell in Brettons Bay”, St. Mary's County (p. 209). There can be little question that this is the church or chapel built by “Zealous Roman Catholick Inhabitants of New Town and St. Clement's Bay”, St. Mary's County, upon the one and a half acre lot given November ro, 1661, by William Bretton, a very prominent Roman Catholic, lying on the east side of the tract Bretton's Outlet at the head of St. Nicholas creek, near the narrowest place of the free- hold Little Brittain (Bretton) (Arch. Md. XLI, 531). The only evidence of an outbreak of religious intolerance characterized by vandalism comes to light when at the February, 1669-70, court, upon the complaint of William Bretton, gentleman, it was reported that a certain Robert Pennywell “had broke the glasse windowes at the Chappell at St. Maries". The culprit was ordered to have twenty lashes (pp. 610-611). From the fact that the complainant was a very prominent Roman Catholic, it seems likely that it was the Catholic, and not the chapel of the Established Church, that suffered, although the Martenet atlas shows a “Protestant Point” in this neighborhood. As the sentence was a lashing, the vandal was doubtless a servant, as freemen were rarely flogged, and the land records show an indentured servant of this name had come into the Province about this time. The name of a Roman Catholic priest, Henry Warren, of St. Inigoes, St. Mary's County, occurs frequently in this record, usually as a buyer or seller |
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Volume 57, Preface 54 View pdf image (33K) |
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