"Thus," says McMahan, "was introduced, for the first time in Maryland, a church establishment, sustained by law and fed by general taxation." Other laws oppressive in their bearings upon those opposed in religious views to the dominant party were enacted, some of which remained in force until the glorious emancipation day, in the summer of 1776, gave freedom to our nation.
Partly in order to better accommodate the people of Maryland, but more for the purpose of punishing the adherents of Lord Baltimore, who constituted a greater proportion of the population of St. Mary's, the seat of government was moved from there to Anne Arundel, a town on the shore of the Chesapeake, early in 1694, and there a general assembly was convened in February. The following year, the name of the place was changed by authority to Annapolis, and the naval station of the province was established there. Annapolis has, ever since, continued to be the capital of Maryland, while St. Mary's, dependent for its existence upon its being the capital of the province, speedily sunk into ruins.
Lord Baltimore never recovered his proprietary rights. Neither did he return to America, but died in England in the year 1714, at the age of eighty-five years. He was succeeded by his son Benedict Leonard Calvert. That son had abandoned the faith of his father and, in the spring of 1715, died, when his title to the province devolved upon his infant son Charles, who, with his brothers and sisters, had been educated as Protestants. Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore and William Penn were contemporaries, and were equally conspicuous for their beneficent disposition. They are regarded as the best of all the proprietors, who owned charted domains in America.
Rufus Stevens, an uncle of Charles Stevens, the youth of Salem, was living in New Jersey, when Lord Berkeley, disgusted by the losses and annoyances which the ownership of the colony brought upon him, sold his interests in the province to John Fenwick and Edward Byllinge, English Friends, or Quakers, for the sum of five thousand dollars. The tract thus disposed of was in the western part of the province. With some emigrants, mostly of the society of Friends, Fenwick sailed for his new possessions. They entered at a spot not far from the Delaware River, which they named Salem, on account of the peaceful aspect of the country and the surrounding Indians. There, with the peculiar gravity of the sect, Fenwick and his two daughters, thirteen men (most of them heads of families) and one woman, the wife of one of the emigrants, sat in silent worship, according to their custom, under the shadow of a great tree, with covered heads and quiet bodies, on the ensuing "First Day" after their arrival. Then they built log cabins for shelter, and so began a new life in the wilds of New Jersey.