William Stone Arrives in the New World

First page of the Religious Toleration Act

Maryland State Archives

Thomas Stone was descended from a long line of public servants. His great-grandfather, William, came to America from England in 1628 and settled first in Virginia. After a successful venture in Virginia, Stone moved to Maryland. He gained a reputation in both colonies as an honest and fair minded man.

In 1642, a bloody civil war began in England between supporters of King Charles I, a man raised Protestant but who was sympathetic to Catholics (his wife Henrietta Maria was Catholic and she is the person that Maryland was named for), and the mostly Puritan (Protestant) English Parliament. After six years of warfare, Parliament captured King Charles I in 1648 and in January, 1649, beheaded him. The Parliamentarian Oliver Cromwell would rule as Lord Protector for the next nine years, the only period in English history between the invasion of William the Conqueror that established the modern dynastic system of England in 1066 until today (over 950 years) that neither a King or Queen ruled the nation.

The war in England spilled over into Maryland as well. Puritans raided Catholic properties and caused so much damage that the period came to be known as "The Plundering Time." As Parliament seemed to be winning the war in England, and since Puritans were causing havoc in Maryland, Maryland's proprietary leader, Cecilius Calvert, 3rd Lord Baltimore, wanted to show Parliament and his colony's Puritans that even though he was Catholic, he remained a loyal subject to the governing body. In 1648, William Stone, a Puritan, was selected to be the governor of Maryland, the first Protestant to hold that office in the colony. Calvert's belief that Stone, as a Protestant, would assume the leadership of the colony and would restore peace between religious factions was misguided.

Stone's tenure as governor of Maryland was filled with conflict; the Puritans of the colony were not in line with his tolerant views toward other Christians, namely Catholics, particularly in his adoption of the Religious Toleration Act of 1649. Stone was removed from the governorship in 1654 by a strong Puritan force, raised a small army of Catholics and non-Puritan Protestants in an attempt to take back his position, and was defeated by Puritan forces in the Battle of the Severn in March of 1655, being imprisoned by them for a number of years.

In 1658, Stone was given his freedom upon the death of Oliver Cromwell and the restoration of the monarchy in England under King Charles II. As a reward for his service to the Calvert family, Stone was granted acreage in newly formed Charles County, Maryland. Stone built his home, Poynton Manor, and lived there until his death in 1660. His property would be split between his sons. Stone's descendants would include a governor of the state of Maryland, a representative in the first Congress of the United States, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.