Thus he was in antagonism to the Puritan colony both in politics and in religion.

A formidable disturbing element he and his company would have been in the already unquiet community.

The authorities of the colony were equal to the emergency.

In answer to his lordship's announcement of his purpose "to plant and dwell," they gave him welcome to do so on the same terms with themselves, and proceeded to tender him the oath of supremacy, the taking of which was flatly against his Roman principles.

Baltimore suggested a mitigated form of the oath, which he was willing to take; but the authorities "could not imagine that so much latitude was left for them to decline from the prescribed form"; and his lordship sailed back to England, leaving in Virginia, in token of his intention to return, his servants and "his lady," who, by the way, was not the lawful wife of this conscientious and religious gentleman.
Returned to London, he at once set in motion the powerful influences at his command to secure a charter for a tract of land south of the James River, and when this was defeated by the energetic opposition of the friends of Virginia, he succeeded in securing a grant of land north and east of the Potomac, with a charter bestowing on him and his heirs "the most ample rights and privileges ever conferred by a sovereign of England."[55:1] The protest of Virginia that it was an invasion of the former grant to that colony was unavailing.