By a royal charter of 1632, Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, became proprietor of the colony of Maryland in North America. He was also granted the right to ‘ordain, make and enact laws of whatsoever kind’ for its government, but only ‘with the advice assent and aprobation of the freemen of the said province’. Maryland was first settled in 1633 by some 150 immigrants, twenty of whom were ‘gentlemen of good fortune’, all but one of them Roman Catholics. The rest were, for the most part, Protestant indentured servants committed to about five years' servitude before obtaining their freedom. Lord Baltimore appointed his brother, Leonard Calvert, governor of the colony, to administer its affairs with the help of an advisory council and civil, judicial and military officers appointed from amongst the gentlemen.

Despite these provisions, the new colony had few men capable of administering even the most rudimentary system of criminal justice. Only one of the first settlers, Jerome Hawley, a gentleman and former member of the Inner Temple, had any legal training, and his stay in the colony was very short. Indeed, by 1640 most of the gentleman colonists had either died or returned to England, and were not replaced. In the absence of anyone of comparable education or social standing, Governor Calvert therefore had to recruit new law officers from among the freemen and freed servants, who were for the most part men of little or no education or experience of criminal justice administration.