At the courts baron and leet the tenants elected the minor officers, tried offences, and made by-laws for their own government.

Later, when negroes substituted white laborers, these feudal manors changed to plantations worked by slaves instead of free tenants.[15] Even great office-holders and a landed aristocracy were insufficient to sustain the regal dignity to which Lord Baltimore aspired.
Apparently, his right of initiating legislation and dictating the make-up of the assembly ought to have been sufficient.

But political and social equality sprang from the very conditions of life in the New World; and despite the veneering of royalty, Maryland came soon to be a government of the people.

The struggle began in the assembly which met in February, 1635, but not much is known of the proceedings of this assembly beyond the fact that it assumed the initiative and drew up a code to which Lord Baltimore refused his assent.
Of subsequent assemblies the record is copious enough.

Lord Baltimore had the right under his charter to summon "all the freemen, or the greater part of them, or their representatives," and thus for a long time there was a curious jumble of anomalies, which rendered the assembly peculiarly sensitive to governmental influence.