The Jesuit mission had languished; the progress of settlement, and what there had been of religious life and teaching, had brought no strength to the Catholic cause.

In 1676 a Church of England minister, John Yeo, writes to the Archbishop of Canterbury of the craving lack of ministers, excepting among the Catholics and the Quakers, "not doubting but his Grace may so prevail with Lord Baltimore that a maintenance for a Protestant ministry may be established." The Bishop of London, echoing this complaint, speaks of the "total want of ministers and divine worship, except among those of the Romish belief, who, 'tis conjectured, does not amount to one of a hundred of the people." To which his lordship replies that all sects are tolerated and protected, but that it would be impossible to induce the Assembly to consent to a law that shall oblige any sect to maintain other ministers than its own.

The bishop's figures were doubtless at fault; but Lord Baltimore himself writes that the nonconformists outnumber the Catholics and those of the Church of England together about three to one, and that the churchmen are much more numerous than the Catholics.
After the Revolution of 1688 it is not strange that a like movement was set on foot in Maryland.

The "beneficent despotism" of the Calverts, notwithstanding every concession on their part, was ended for the time by the efforts of an "Association for the Defense of the Protestant Religion," and Maryland became a royal colony.

Under the new regime it was easier to inflict annoyances and disabilities on the petty minority of the Roman Catholics than to confer the privileges of an established church on the hardly more considerable minority of Episcopalians.