High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Charles Carroll (1661 1720), sometimes called Charles Carroll the Settler to differentiate him from his son and grandson, 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 resulted in the disenfranchisement of Maryland 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, which was intended by its founder George Calvert and his descendants 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