A Time of Troubles

During the 1640s, civil war in England set King Charles I against Parliament, and that conflict reached Maryland, where the proprietary government led by Lord Baltimore and other Catholics supported the King while many of the colony's first settlers were Protestants who favored Parliament. Early in 1645, Richard Ingle, a Protestant captain of a Virginia vessel, sailed up the St. Mary's River and overthrew the Maryland government. A fort was built around the governor's house as the stronghold of the rebellion, creating the only military action in North America related to the English Civil War. Governor Leonard Calvert fled across the river to Virginia with some followers, and Maryland's population briefly fell to about a hundred people. Two years later, the occupation ended peacefully when Leonard Calvert returned from exile and, with mercenary soldiers, reclaimed control of Maryland. After Calvert's death, Margaret Brent acted as executor of his business affairs and tried to restore order in the colony. The fort around Calvert's house became known as Pope's Fort after Nathaniel Pope, a Protestant settler who aided Ingle and his men, and artifacts such as a tasset found in its ditch remain the only evidence of the English Civil War in America.

Maryland · United States