A chasm in the colonial records, from November, 1688, to the beginning of 1692, leaves us without accurate information of its reasons and progress. Apparently, the alarm of Popery then general through the empire, was the true cause, and some indiscretions of the proprietary's governors the pretence. The government was at this time in a commission of nine deputies, who by summoning the lower house of assembly to take an oath of fidelity to the proprietary, were deemed to have committed a breach of its privilege. The president of the deputies was a Mr. Joseph, whose address on the opening of the assembly, being a very quaint but clumsy exposition of _jus divinum_, and of its derivation to himself, cannot claim the praise of a happy adaption to the humour of the moment. The house refusing to take the oath, the assembly was prorogued. News now came of the expected invasion of England by the Prince of Orange; and, without any fixed views probably, even as to their own course in the existing distractions, much less against the Protestants of the province, the deputies awaked jealousy, and gave rumour wings by ordering the public arms to be collected, and attempting to check reports which might beget "disaffection to the proprietary government." The whole colony resounded with the cry of a Popish plot; and as a treaty long subsisting with some Indian tribes happened to be renewed about this time, the plot thus engendered by the deputies was to be accomplished, it was asserted, by the aid of the savages and the French. An accidental delay of the proprietary's instructions for proclaiming William and Mary, heightened the alarm, or increased the exasperation; and at length, in April 1689, an association was formed, styling itself, "An Association in arms for the defence of the Protestant Religion, and for asserting the right of King William and Queen Mary to the province of Maryland." The deputies took refuge from the storm in a garrisoned fort at Mattapany, by whose surrender, in August 1689, the Associators gained undisputed possession of the province. The articles of surrender have preserved the names of the leaders, at the head of which is that of John Coode, another personage of colonial celebrity.