INTRODUCTION xxxv

and possibly other conditions, rendered it necessary that a capable man fill
more than one office, sometimes many offices, at the same time.¹ William
Bladen, the successor of Denton as clerk of the Court of Appeals, a young
man who had been educated in law at the Inner Temple, and who appears
to have been one of the best educated men in the province, held at one time,
in 1700, the offices of clerk of the council, clerk of the Court of Appeals,
clerk of the prerogative court, and secretary of the province.² The order of
the council that made Denton clerk of the Court of Appeals to be held by it
required that he should " likewise keepe a Separate Record for entering all
Such proceedings brought and determined in that Court"; and it would
seem to have been in pursuance of that order that the present volume was
begun. The book was marked " Liber H. D. No. i." Denton kept an-
other book in which he recorded executive and legislative proceedings of the
council, and that book he marked merely " Liber H. D." It has been pub-
lished in the Archives of Maryland.³

11. THE TEXT OF "LIBER H. D. No. i"

The original " Liber H. D. No. i " is a folio of over eight hundred manu-
script pages, in fair condition, and legible, but there have been some mu-
tilations, and the record will be found interrupted by reason of these and
other causes. Original pages 33 to 42, both inclusive, have been cut out and
lost. Partial restoration has been found possible in this instance, however,
because a contemporary index in the back of the book shows that opinions
demanded of the attorneys on questions in litigation before the court had
been transcribed on these pages, and opinions answering the description
were also transcribed by Denton and have been preserved in his record of
the executive and legislative work of the council. They are reproduced in
an appendix to this volume.

Original pages 152 to 155, both inclusive, are blank, and there is an
omission at that place of a record of proceedings between a session of Octo-
ber 31, 1698, and one of October 7, 1707, except for a note on original page
147 of abatement of the case of Slye v. Bowling's Executors, on May 2, 1700.
In the docket of the court there is likewise an absence of entries between the
May Term, 1700, and the July Term, 1707. A probable explanation of the
gap in both books lies in the fact that Denton died in April, 1698, and that
the scarcity of men of the needed ability made it necessary to have William
Bladen, who, as has been stated, was already encumbered with work in other

¹ In 1694, at Annapolis, it was ordered by the council that all capable persons in town
be employed to complete the necessary copying of the compilation of the laws in force in 1692.
Archives, XX, 172.

2 Christopher Johnson, " Bladen Family," Maryland Hist. Mag., V, 298. He became attor-
ney general in 1707, and commissary general of the prerogative court in 1714.

3 Archives, XX.