The granting of Roman Catholic emancipation in Newfoundland was less straightforward than it was in Ireland, and this question had a significant influence on the wider struggle for a legislature. Almost from its first settlement, Newfoundland had a significant population of Roman Catholics, largely because George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, was the founding proprietor of the Province of Avalon on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. After Calvert himself converted to Roman Catholicism in 1625, he migrated to Avalon, intending his colony there to serve as a refuge for his persecuted fellow-religionists. Newfoundland, however, like Calvert's other colony in the Province of Maryland, ultimately passed out of the Calvert family's control, and its Roman Catholic population became subject to essentially the same religious restrictions that applied in other areas under British control. In the period from 1770 to 1800, the Governors of Newfoundland had begun to relax restrictions on Roman Catholics, permitting the establishment of French and Irish missions. On visiting St. John's in 1786, Prince William Henry (the future King William IV) noted that "there are ten Roman Catholics to one Protestant",Memorial University , Note 87: PWH to King, 21 September 1786, Later Correspondence of George III, Vol. 1, 251. and the Prince worked to counter the early relaxations of ordinances against this substantial majority.
