Template:Wp-Charles Carroll the Settler

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Charles Carroll (1661–1720), sometimes called Charles Carroll the Settler to differentiate him from his son and grandson,^[1] was a wealthy lawyer and planter in colonial Maryland. Carroll, a Catholic, is best known because his efforts to hold office in the Protestant-dominated colony (of Maryland) resulted in the disfranchisement of the colony's Catholics.

The second son of Irish Catholic parents, Carroll was educated in France as a lawyer before returning to England, where he pursued the first steps in a legal career. Before that career developed, he secured a position as Attorney General of the young colony of Maryland. Its founder George Calvert and his descendants intended it as a refuge for Catholics.

Carroll supported Charles Calvert, the colony's Catholic proprietor, in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the Protestant majority from gaining political control over Maryland. Following the overthrow of the Calvert proprietorship and the subsequent exclusion of Catholics from colonial government, Carroll turned his attention to planting, law, business, and various offices in the proprietor's remnant organization. He was the wealthiest man in the colony by the time of his death. In the last years of his life, Carroll attempted to regain some vestige of political power for Catholics in the colony, but the Protestant colonial assembly and Governor John Hart disfranchised them. His son, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, became a wealthy planter and his grandson, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, also wealthy, was the only Catholic signer of the United States Declaration of Independence.