PREFACE.

The present volume continues the Proceedings and Acts of the
Assembly from April, 1684, to June, 1692. The continuity is broken
by the revolutionary outbreak of 1689, no journal of the Associators'
Assembly having been preserved. To fill this gap to some extent
we have inserted copies of documents preserved in the Public Record
Office, London; but for fuller details the Council Records must
be consulted. This revolutionary Assembly, which handed over the
Province to the King, was succeeded by one elected under the
new order of things, and presided over by Lionel Copley, the first
royal governor, which, among other fundamental changes, repealed
all existing statutes in mass, and promulgated a new code, which is
here given in full.

The sources for the session of 1684 are the original journals of the
two Houses, small unbound cahiers; that of the Lower House being in
a damaged condition, but missing words have been supplied from a
later copy.

Of the session of 1686 no journal of either House has been pre-
served, and we print the Acts only. Of the session of 1688 we have
no Lower House journal, and for the Upper House only a copy made
in the last century. The Acts of these three sessions are preserved in
Lib. WH.

For the important Assembly of 1692, we have the original journal of
the Lower House, an unbound cahier, much damaged by damp and
worms, but on the whole intelligible. Where possible, the text has
been supplied from the Acts, or from the Upper House journal, which
exists only in a later copy. Here and elsewhere such restorations are
indicated by brackets. The Acts of this session are from Lib. LL, a
copy made in 1695 at Whitehall from the original in the Plantation
Office, as the colophon shows.

There seems hardly occasion for explanatory notes. The reader
may observe, on p. 126, the naturalization of De la Grange, Dankers,
Sluyter, and Bayard, the Labadists, whose settlement at Bohemia
Manor forms a singular chapter of Maryland history. On p. 90, 1. 8,
the contraction " pvt pet "is for " prout petitur," "as is asked." The
use of "Annapolis " on p. 328 is an obvious slip by the scribe of the
late copy of the Upper House Journal.

W. H. B.