his title of Secretary of State in 1625 after announcing his Roman Catholicism. Officially the colony is said to be named in honor of Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I. Some Catholic scholars believe that George Calvert named the province after Mary, the mother of Jesus. The name in the charter was phrased Terra Mariae, anglice, Maryland. The English name was preferred due to the undesired associations of Mariae with the Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana, linked to the Inquisition. As did other colonies, Maryland used the headright system to encourage people to bring in new settlers. Led by Leonard Calvert, Cecil Calvert's younger brother, the first settlers departed from Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, on November 22, 1633, aboard two small ships, the Ark and the Dove. Their landing on March 25, 1634, at St. Clement's Island in southern Maryland is commemorated by the state each year on that date as Maryland Day. This was the site of the first Catholic mass in the Colonies, with Father Andrew White leading the service. The first group of colonists consisted of 17 gentlemen and their wives, and about two hundred others, mostly indentured servants. After purchasing land from the Yaocomico Indians and establishing the town of St. Mary's, Leonard, per his brother's instructions, attempted to govern the country under feudalistic precepts. Meeting resistance, in February 1635, he summoned a colonial assembly. In 1638, the Assembly forced him to govern according to the laws of England. The right to initiate legislation passed to the assembly. In 1638 Calvert seized a trading post in Kent Island established by the Virginian William Claiborne. In 1644 Claiborne led an uprising of Maryland Protestants. Calvert was forced to flee to Virginia, but he returned at the head of an armed force in 1646 and reasserted proprietarial rule. Maryland soon became one of the few predominantly Catholic regions among the English colonies in North America. Maryland was also one of the key destinations where the government sent tens of thousands of English convicts punished by sentences of transportation. Such punishment persisted until the Revolutionary War. The Maryland Toleration Act, issued in 1649, was one of the first laws that explicitly defined tolerance of varieties of Christianity. Protestant revolts St. Mary's City was the largest settlement in Maryland and the seat of colonial government until 1695. Because Anglicanism had become the official religion in