Anglican establishment in Maryland; it did not oblige Baltimore to do anything at all, nor did it, in fact, put any constraint whatever on his actions in this regard. The impotent clause which seemed to limit, but did not limit, the ecclesiastical organization was breathlessly followed by one far from impotent--a masterpiece of George Calvert's skill. It gave to the proprietary the legal power exercised from ancient times by the Bishops of Durham as counts-palatine. The regalities of Durham having been pared down by Henry VIII, the charter somewhat furtively reached back after the local absolutism of the middle ages by giving Baltimore all the temporal power ever possessed by any Bishop of Durham. But if alarm should be taken at the giving of powers so vast to a Roman Catholic subject, there might be reassurance for timid souls in a clause in imitation of older charters than Calvert's, which stipulated that no interpretation should be put upon the charter by which God's holy and true Christian religion might be prejudiced. Ambiguity spread from the charter to some of the early Maryland laws, which wore a Protestant or a Catholic face according to the side from which they were approached. XI. [Sidenote: Condition of English Catholics.] [Sidenote: An act for the better discovering and repressing of popish recusants. Also, An act to prevent, etc., 3 Jac. I, chaps. iv and v.] When George Calvert projected his new southern colony he had every reason to suppose that it would be quickly supplied with settlers from the discontented English and Irish Catholics. The statute enacted in the third year of James, soon after the Gunpowder Plot, put those who adhered to the Roman communion in a precarious and exasperating situation. For the first year that a Catholic wholly neglected the sacraments of the English church he must pay twenty pounds. This was raised to forty the second year, and to sixty for every year of conscientious abstention thereafter. If he did not attend the parish church at all, the luxury of a conscience cost him twenty pounds a month, which, as money then went, was a large sum. If he were a rich landholder, the king might take the use or rentals of two thirds of his land until he should conform. The oath of allegiance by which he was to be tested was made ingeniously offensive to a Catholic conscience. If a Romanist should persuade a Protestant to accept his own faith he was guilty of treason, as was also his convert. The man who harbored a Roman Catholic neglecting to attend the parish church was to be fined ten pounds a month. Marriage by a Romish priest invalidated accruing land tenures. The Catholic was not suffered to send his children beyond seas for an education, nor yet to keep a schoolmaster of his own faith; he could not serve as an executor; he might not have the charge of any child; his house might be searched for Catholic books; he was not allowed to keep weapons; and when at