Lionel Copley

Lionel Copley
Royal Governor of Maryland
In office 1692–1693
Preceded by	Nehemiah Blakiston
Succeeded by	Thomas Lawrence

Sir Lionel Copley (1648–1693) was the 1st Royal Governor of Maryland from 1692 through his death in 1693. He was the first official royal governor appointed by the British crown after the colony was removed from the proprietary control of the Calvert family during the Glorious Revolution. Copley engaged in a series of political struggles with the colonial assembly and the colonial secretary, Thomas Lawrence, in the year between his arrival and his death the next year.

Copley arrived in the Maryland colony following a Protestant rebellion that had overthrown the proprietorship of the Catholic Calvert family. The Protestants, who were the majority in the colony, had ejected their leaders after a brief conflict, echoing the Glorious Revolution that had occurred in England in 1688. From the overthrow of the proprietary government in 1689 until the arrival of Copley in 1692, Maryland had been governed by leaders of the rebellion, who called themselves the Protestant Associators. Their rule was somewhat catholic; the only courts that met at the time were the county courts and the associators used their executive power to punish their enemies.

Copley's arrival in the colony in 1692 heralded the return of British control to the colony, though the leaders of the rebellion took care to find ways to cement their power in the elected lower house of colonial government, the assembly. Having felt that their rights were abused by a strong executive power prior to the rebellion, they sought ways to prevent a similar situation under royal control. They appointed their own clerk, a man named John Lewellin, and created a number of standing committees designed to ensure the continuity and power of the assembly. Among these were a committee on elections, which would establish that the legislature itself would have control of how its members were elected. In addition, a committee on aggrievances handled complaints from the citizenry, a committee of laws was responsible for overhauling the legal code of the colony, and a committee on accounts oversaw economic and financial legislation.

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