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English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century. By John D. Krugler. Baltimore, Md.: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. xii + 319 pp. $46.00, cloth.
In English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century, John D. Krugler draws together years of research to provide a complex and detailed picture of how the Catholic Lords Baltimore conceived of and implemented a unique vision of religious freedom and economic adventure in their colonial forays into Ireland, Newfoundland, and eventually Maryland. In doing so, Krugler wants to set the record straight on the Lords Baltimore: they were not Catholic refugees fleeing Protestant England; rather, they were loyal English colonial adventurers who wanted first to make a return on their investments for King and posterity and second to live in peace with their fellow English Protestants. In this sense, Krugler wants us to understand that, even though they were Catholic, the Lords Baltimore were as greedy and loyal to England as any Protestant English colonialists.
The Calverts attempted to accomplish these pragmatic and material goals by allowing religious toleration in their colonies, or, more specifically, by trying to separate private religious devotion from loyalty to the Crown-in other words, building a Christian colony without an established church. Doing so would allow the Lords Baltimore to recruit Catholics (much needed to populate their colonies) along with Protestants and would furthermore help to maintain peace and economic stability within the colony. Even though religious freedom was primarily a pragmatic goal, Krugler argues nevertheless that such views...