Background
John Coode was born about 1660 in Penryn, Cornwall, England.
John Coode was born about 1660 in Penryn, Cornwall, England.
He attended Oxford University when he was only 16 years old.
In 1676 he took a seat in the Maryland Assembly as a delegate from St. Marys County. He immediately became active in proceedings for the protection of the frontier from the Indians. Subsequently he was charged with accusing Catholics of committing murders that were usually laid to Indians.
He became an associate of Josias Fendall as early as 1681. The two were arrested that year on a charge of attempting to stir up mutiny and sedition. Coode was not found guilty but was reproved for his "love to amaze the ignorant and make sport with his wit. " The governor and council requested that Coode, while under indictment, be suspended from his seat in the lower house of the Assembly. In the dispute that arose from this request it was stated that at a session of the St. Marys county court in which Coode was sitting as a justice of the peace he, who had once been a clergyman, behaved so debauchedly and profanely that the court issued an order to put him under bonds to keep the peace; that he contemptuously tore and disobeyed the order; that the proprietor then vacated his commission as a justice of the peace; and that since then Coode had for revenge persisted in spreading false scandalous reports, uttering mutinous and seditious speeches, and threatening a force of ten thousand men to subvert the government. Coode's opportunity came in 1689 when a messenger's death caused delay in an official recognition of the new Protestant monarchs of England by the Catholic government of Maryland, which the preceding year had joyfully acclaimed the birth of a Catholic heir to the English throne. The failure of such recognition gave credence to an oft repeated rumor that the Catholics were in a conspiracy with the Indians to massacre the Protestants, and in July of this year Coode, as captain of the militia of a "Protestant Association" with about seven hundred men at his command, seized the government. In a series of falsehoods, mixed with some truth, he represented to the King that the proprietor had forfeited his rights and that the Association had acted only in the interest of his Majesty's service and the Protestant religion.
Assuming the title of general he, in the name of the King, called for the election of an Assembly and to this body he and his associates surrendered the supreme authority which they had usurped.
In August 1690 he sailed for England to prove his charges against the proprietor, saying on the way over that what he had done "was in prejudice or revenge to the Lord Baltimore. " He was among those recommended by the first royal governor to a seat in his council, but was not appointed.
He was elected to the Assembly in 1696 but was denied a seat, on the ground that he had once been a Roman Catholic priest and was therefore ineligible. He then hatched a plot against the governor, was indicted by grand jury, and fled to Virginia.
In 1701 he was pardoned on his own abject petition. He was again elected in 1708, but, after sitting a few days, was again excluded. He died in March 1709.
He was characterized as "so hainously flagitious and wicked scarce to be paralleled in the Province. "
His wife was Eliza. They had three sons and three daughters.
