Lord Baltimore went to England again, in 1684, leaving the government of his province in charge of several deputies under the nominal governorship of his infant son. There he found his rights in great peril; but before the matter could be brought to a direct issue by the operation of a writ of _quo warranto_, King James was driven from the throne, and Protestant William and Mary ascended it. Lord Baltimore immediately acquiesced in the political change. On account of his instructions to his deputies to proclaim the new monarchs being delayed in their transmission, he was charged with hesitancy; and a restless spirit named Coode, an associate of Fendall in his insurrectionary movements--"a man of loose morals and blasphemous speech"--excited the people by the cry of "a popish plot!" He was the author of a false story put in circulation, that the local magistrates in Maryland and the Roman Catholics there had engaged with the Indians in a plot for the destruction of the Protestants in the province. An actual league at that time between the French and the Jesuit missionaries with the savages on the New England frontiers for the destruction of the English colonies in the east seemed to give color to the story, which created great excitement. The old feud burned intensely. The Protestants formed an armed association led by Coode. They marched to the Maryland capital, took possession of the records and assumed the functions of a provisional government, in May, 1689. In the following August they met in convention, when they prepared and sent to the new sovereigns a report of their proceedings, and a series of absurd and false accusations against Lord Baltimore. In conclusion, they requested the monarchs to depose Lord Baltimore by making Maryland a royal province and taking it under the protection of the crown.
William and Mary listened favorably to the request and, moved by the false representations, complied with it. Coode was ordered to administer the government in the name of the king. He ruled with the spirit of a petty tyrant, until the people of every religious and political creed were heartily disgusted with him, and, in 1692, he was supplanted by Sir Lionel Copley, whom the king sent to be governor of Maryland. On the arrival of the new governor, in the spring of 1692, he summoned a general assembly, to meet at St. Mary's in May. New laws abolishing religious toleration were instituted. The church of England was made the state church for Maryland, to be supported by a tax on the whole people.