Excerpt from Parish Institutions of Maryland: With Illustrations From Parish Records Before the last years of the seventeenth century but few Church of England ministers had been attracted to the colony planted by Lord Baltimore on the shores of the Chesapeake. Those who had ventured to take up an abode there were supported mainly by voluntary contributions, with now and then a legacy, or by the produce of their farms. Frequent complaints were made to England of the low state of morality and religion in the Province. Movement were started with a view of checking these evils, and the result was the passing in 1692 of an "Act for the Service of Almighty God and the Establishment of the Protestant Religion" in Maryland. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.