What we know of the petty civil wars of Maryland is tedious and perplexing. The broils before 1649 sprang from diverse sources, some of which we know, others we may easily conjecture. There was the old claim of Claiborne to jurisdiction over Kent Island; there was a disposition on the part of some of the Marylanders to relieve the tedium of existence by taking a hand in the great struggle against royal authority which was rending England; there was the tendency common in frontier communities to carry debates to a violent issue; there was perhaps a natural proneness to insurrection on the part of bond servants and men lately out of service; and there was an innate hunger for spoil of any sort in the seamen of that age and in the rougher class on shore. But by 1648 the tempest had passed for the time; order had been reestablished; the Catholic and the Puritan were living in peace like the lion and the lamb of Hebrew prophecy; and the Catholic proprietary, always promptly bending before the storm, had delegated his authority to a Protestant governor who took the Parliament side. XXI. [Sidenote: The Act of 1649.] [Sidenote: Note 25.] Before this epoch Maryland toleration had been merely a practical fact. It had not been theoretically stated; it had not been a matter of legislation at all; its extent and limitations were unknown. But now that this colonial home of Catholics was to be a land of Protestants, and particularly of Puritans, it was necessary to formulate the principle of toleration, the more, that Baltimore's own co-religionists were to be put under a Protestant governor. Governor and high officers of state were required to swear that they would molest on account of religion no person professing to believe in Jesus Christ, "and in particular no Roman Catholic." By the mere march of events it had come to pass that in the state founded by Catholics as a cradle for the Roman Catholic religion, the Catholic was now compelled to secure as best he could the toleration of his religion at the hands of the heretic. Part of Baltimore's plan for this new settlement of affairs involved the sending over of a code of perpetual laws to be adopted by the Assembly. The proprietary gave orders that the governor should not assent to any of these laws if all were not passed; but the Assembly of Maryland farmers was too cunning to be entrapped into passing laws which it thought inconvenient and unjust. A humble letter was sent from the members to the lord proprietary complaining that they were "illeterate" and "void of that Understanding and Comprehension" necessary to the discussion of such a code, and that in April they were too busy with their "necessary employment in a Crop" to give attention to it. They selected certain acts out of the code which they passed, among which was the famous Act of Toleration of 1649. That this was part of the code sent from England there can be no doubt; the "illeterate" colonists were not