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 One thing is sure. The respite granted by the Toleration Act was only temporary. In the upheaval that drove James II from his throne forty years later, the pledge of indulgence was grievously wounded. From that time forward Anglicans had the upper hand and, making full use of their opportunity, they established the Church of England in Maryland, authorized the collection of taxes for its support, proscribed the public exercise of Catholic worship, and forbade the admission of Catholic immigrants. Thus they exhibited the symbols of Anglican supremacy in a manner that alienated from the government of England the affections of a powerful and wealthy class. As George III learned to his sorrow, Catholics upon occasion could be as revolutionary as Separatists.

The success of the Baltimores, in spite of their tribulations, fired the imagination of other courtiers. When the long night of the Civil War was over and Charles II was secure upon the throne of his fathers, there were many loyal, if not servile, supporters of the old monarchy to be rewarded and many creditors with claims upon the treasury and bounty of the new sovereign. Among the throng that now surged about the throne were eight men of outstanding pretensions: Clarendon, the prime minister whose devotion to the royalist cause had been above suspicion; Monk, the turncoat general of the parliamentary army who had delivered the country to Charles and was rewarded by elevation to the peerage; Lord Ashley Cooper, later the Earl of Shaftesbury, whose facility for changing his opinions in shifting currents won the favor of his ruler; Sir George Carteret, who, as governor of the island of Jersey in the English Channel, had been the last to lower the royal standard before Cromwell's victorious forces; Sir William Berkeley, high Tory governor of Virginia, and his brother, Lord Berkeley, both of whom had sustained the monarchy against