The first emigration consisted of two hundred gentlemen of considerable fortune and rank, with their adherents, chiefly Roman Catholics, who hoped to enjoy liberty of conscience, under a proprietary of their own profession. They sailed from England in November, and landed in Maryland the beginning of 1633. Governor _Colvert_, brother to lord Baltimore, very wisely and justly purchased, by presents of various goods, the rights of the Indians, and with their free consent took possession of their town, which he called St. Mary’s. The country was settled with so much ease, and furnished with so many conveniences, that emigrants repaired thither in such numbers, that the colony soon became popular and flourishing. A third assembly of freemen was held at St. John’s in February, 1638–9, when an act was passed “for establishing the house of assembly.” It inacted that those who shall be elected pursuant to writs issued, shall be called burgesses, and shall supply the place of the freemen who chose them—that the gentlemen summoned by the special writ of the proprietary, and those freemen who shall not have voted at any of the elections, together with the governor and secretary, shall be called “the house of assembly”—that all acts assented to by that body, shall be deemed of the same force, as if the proprietary and freemen had been personly present. Slavery seems to have gained an early establishment in Maryland, for an act of this assembly describes “the people” to consist of all christian inhabitants “slaves only excepted.” The persecuting laws which were passed by the Viginians, soon after this period against the puritans, made the latter emigrate in considerable numbers to Maryland, that they might enjoy, under a popish proprietary, that liberty of conscience, of which they were deprived by fellow protestants. In 1642, the burgesses “desired that they might be separated, and sit by themselves, and have a negative,”—such was their progress in entertaining just conceptions of their own democratic rights. The governor did not grant their request; but they were afterwards more successful. The assembly of 1649, was assuredly divided into two parts, and transacted business in the form of an upper and lower house. That assembly, which convened in April, enacted, that no persons professing to believe in Jesus Christ, shall be molested in respect of their religion, or in the exercise thereof, or be compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion against their consent, so that they be not unfaithful to the proprietary, or conspire against the civil government—that those reproaching any with opprobrious names of religious distinction, shall forfeit ten shillings to the persons injured—that any one speaking reproachfully against the blessed Virgin, or the Apostles, shall forfeit five pounds—but blasphemy against God, shall be punished with death.