240 Letters to the Governor and Council

May 13
Red Book
No. 30
Letter 98

I answered because the waggoners flatly refused to go at fifteen shil-
lings Specia to be paid at the Exchange, nor could I prevail on them
to go to Worcester and Summerset without contracting with them
in this way, and thought it better to do this then to impress them and
flatter myself your Excellency & Honours will think so also when
it is considered there must have gone a guard with them to kept
them at work — those Ten Teams are gone to Salisbury and Snow
Hill for the Pork the other Brigade is kept at work at and about
the Head of Chester some of them I have ordered to begin to haul
down Corn to a Vessel now lying in Chester River, by which I hope
to have a part of it here by the last of the week, which if you approve
of shall deliver to Col^o Yeates, (otherways must sell it on my own
account) as soon as this matter is fully compleated, shall do myself
the Honour of waiting on your Excellency & Honours and the Gen-
eral Assembly

May 12

[Margaret McFadon, Baltimore, to Gov. Lee.]

May it please Your Excellency I received your Excellency's
Letter of the 28^th April this day, but think you have mistook the
name; I have a son who had the honour to Serve as a Cap^t Lieu-
tenant in Cap^t W^m Brown's Company of Artillery whose name is
James McFadon who I conceive your Excellency means but he is
appointed to the command of a company of Artillery formerly com-
manded by Cap^t Gale now at the Southward under Gen^l Greene, my
son has left this Town near three months on his way to the South-
ward but am confident that if permitted by Gen^l Greene will Em-
brace with alacrity any command that your Excellency pleases to
confer on him

May 12

[John Taylor, Prison, Ann^s, To his Excellency the Governor and
the honble the Council of the State of Maryland.]

The Petition of John Taylor now a prisoner in the public jail of
this City most humbly Sheweth That your petitioner being near Sixty
years of age, and a native of this Country was apprehended (not-
withstanding the natural tie of a Man's attachment to his Country)
and taken on Suspicion of his being friendly and assisting to the
Enemy under which he has been imprisoned these ten Days last past.
Your Petitioner being conscious within himself that the charges
exhibited against him, upon the matter being elucidated before the
Court, will be found groundless and Migatory, he is emboldened to
apply to the Clemency of your Excellency and Honors to cause him
to be removed from his present place of Confinement which you must
be sensible is not a place adopted for the Confinement of even the
basest Criminal, much less for a man of his Age and under his im-
pressions (tho unhappily under suspicions) when the greatest Vilain
by Law is ever deemed innocent until he is Convicted by his peers.