The changes that did take place affected Maryland's
relation to England more than the proprietor's relation
to his colonists. Appeals to the crown from Maryland
courts and royal review of Maryland legislation, both
introduced under the royal governors, continued to be
the rule. In addition, the selection of the proprietary
governor required crown approval, and despite the
charter clause that exempted Maryland from English
customs duties, he was required to enforce the Naviga-
tion Acts. This issue had arisen earlier with the passage
of the acts in the 1660s, and the seventeenth-century
proprietors had been forced to accept royal customs of-
ficers in the province. But full cooperation had not been
forthcoming until a royal governor arrived. Acceptance
of these changes was a condition for restoring power to
the Calvert family. Taken together they provided in-
creased accountability to the crown and closer integra-
tion of Maryland into the empire.²¹

   The grant of the charter on June 20, 1632, was only
the beginning in a long chain of events that led to the
American Revolution. Yet the government that emerged
in 1776 retained most of the institutions that had devel-
oped under George Calvert's charter. An elected assem-
bly and a judicial system firmly grounded in English law
and procedure were among the important elements that
the new State of Maryland inherited. It also returned to
the seventeenth-century policy that separated church
and state. The first Lord Baltimore had looked back to
feudal principalities in setting out his powers, but the
document he drafted, when transplanted to the New
World, nurtured the development of religious and
political liberties we still enjoy.

                      [xxiii]