Was There a Separation between Church and State in Mid-17th-Century England and Colonial Maryland?

Abstract

This essay concerns the labors of Catholics in the mid seventheenth-century English settlement at St. Mary's in Mary land and their ideas concerning the establishment of religious freedom. To a certain degree it also concerns the Catholics in England. The essay raises the possibility that the Catholics in Maryland narrowed the separation between church and state to advance what they believed was their religious freedom. At the same time in England, the laboring people may have widened the separation between church and state to achieve the same goal. Part of the discussion centers on why laboring Catholics took one path to religious freedom in Maryland and another in England. The traditional historical interpretation of the Maryland community during the period emphasizes the role of the 1649 Act of Religious Toleration, which in a sense widened the sepa ration between church and state to protect the Catholics' free dom.1 However, the focus of this essay is on a series of laws enacted soon after settlement which narrowed the separation between church and state. These laws preceded the 1649 Act by a decade. The earlier laws addressed a threat to the