The Maryland Toleration Act did not bring complete religious freedom, as is so often assumed, and as a reading of this document will quickly prove. Nor did it come about because of a profound humanistic conviction on the part of Lord Baltimore, the Maryland proprietor. The act was a pragmatic solution to a serious problem. The Catholics in originally Catholic Maryland had become a minority of the population although still power1ul politically. They were in great danger of being ill-treated by the Protestant majority. The Toleration Act, it was believed, was a way of providing protection for Catholics while at the same time representing a nod in the direction of the English government, which in 1649 and for a dozen years thereafter was firmly under the control of the English Puritans.
Nonetheless, the document is important because it did provide modest although impermanent protection for Catholic Marylanders and set a precedent to which others could refer. Despite Baltimore's Catholic background and his desire to use Maryland as a refuge for Catholics persecuted elsewhere, the Catholic Church never became the established church. In the eighteenth century this distinction was given to the Church of England.