xl                   Introduction.

        found its way into the Court of Chancery, and was submitted by the agreement
        of both parties to arbitraton, but while awaiting the decision of the arbitrators
        Staplefort dug up an old bond for £100 which Balley had given him, and mis-
        representing to the Governor that the amount of the bond was £2000, sur-
        reptitiously got out a scire facias against Bailey for £2ooo, and had execution
        issued for this amount. On May z6, 1674, the case reached the Upper House
        on appeal, where Bailey won on all points. This curious and long drawn-out
        case is well summarized in the proceedings of the Upper House of the Assembly
        (Arch. Md. II, 365-368, 379 380).

                               LAND

          Deeds and mortgages, as well as other land papers, are found recorded in
        considerable numbers in the records of the Provincial Court. A purchaser had
        the choice of recording such papers either in the Provincial Court at St. Mary's
        or in the court of the county where the property was located. Where grantor
        and grantee both lived in the same county recording in a county court was
        usually employed, but where the grantee alone lived near the capltal, or where
        the transaction was a large one, the Provincial Court was usually made use of.
        Down to the year 1679 the court minutes and deeds are to be found recorded
        together in the same libers, but after this year separate record books were kept
        for court proceedings and land deeds.
          Until the year 1663 there was no legal requirement that transfers of owner-
        ship of land be recorded, although this was quite often done, and change of
        ownership was usually effected by an assignment noted upon the back of the
        original patent, which passed from hand to hand. In 1663 an act was passed
        requiring recording, and this seems to have been generally observed, although
        the act was for some reason dissented to by the Lord Proprietary in 1668 and
        then became null and void (Arch. Md. I; 487-488). This was followed by a
        period of eight years until 1676 when such a law was finally revived, passed, and
        approved (Arch. Md. II; 544). In this eight year interval, although recording
        was not obligatory, papers relating to land transfers were, however, generally
        recorded.
          In this volume we find recorded assignments of patents, lengthy deeds filled
        with legal verbosity, bills of sale for land much shorter than the preceding
        deeds, quit claim deeds, leases, mortgages, powers of attorney to convey land,
        and orders for resurveys. More than a hundred and thirty pages of this entire
        record thus relate to transfers of land. Much of great local interest is often to be
        found in these land records, and the transfer of ownership of several noted
        manors and other plantations is revealed.
          The general supposition that much of the attention of the Maryland courts
        in the seventeenth century was taken up with land cases is not correct. Suits
        for debt outnumbered suits involving land by more than twenty to one. To
        avoid payment to the Proprietary as long as possible of fees and quit rents pay-
        able after a patent was issued, an increasingly large number of prospective
        patentees of land, whose rights to land had been entered and surveys made,