The English Province of the Society of Jesus was responsible for the Catholic mission to the English North American colonies. The first missionaries were sent to Maryland (established 1634) at the invitation of the proprietor, the Catholic Lord Baltimore Cecil Calvert (1605/6–75), where they maintained a presence for the entire colonial period. Maryland served as their headquarters for a mission that encompassed the territory between New York and Virginia at the time of the American Revolution. In all, more than 150 priests and brothers were sent to labor in the colonies between 1634 and 1776. The Jesuits financed the mission with the support of the English Province, the profits generated by the plantations and properties they owned in Maryland and Pennsylvania, bequests they received from the laity, and two endowed funds. They operated independently of the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda Fide, the Vatican agency created in 1622 to oversee missions, which expressed little interest in the activities of these missionaries. When the Jesuits were suppressed as a religious order by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, the missionaries in the American colonies submitted to the authority of the vicar apostolic of the London district and continued on in their labors as secular (diocesan) priests.