PREFACE.

The present volume contains the Proceedings and Acts of Assembly
for 1715-16, in regular continuance from the last volume. As was
before explained, the Statute Book LL 4 having long been lost, we
were compelled to take the public general Acts from Bacon's published
edition, into which they were copied from the missing Liber. Private
Acts Bacon gives by titles only, which it has not been thought necessary
to reproduce.

With regard to the public Acts of 1715, we have been more fortunate.
Queen Anne had ordered a complete revision of the laws, amounting
to the compilation of a new code; and this was accomplished in 1715.
A copy of these Acts, forming a stout MS. book, was sent to the Pro-
prietary, and is now among the Calvert Papers, from which book our
text has been taken. One act of 1716 was taken from a MS. copy in
the collections of the Maryland Historical Society.

Charles Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the second Proprietary of Maryland,
died, at an advanced age, on February 20, 1714/15, and was succeeded
by his son, Benedict Leonard. But before the news of his death reached
the Province, which was on the 29^th or 30^th of May, Benedict Leonard
had also died (April 5), and been succeeded by his son Charles, a minor,
under the guardianship of Francis, Lord Guilford. Benedict had em-
braced the Protestant faith, and his children were brought up in the
Church of England.

As the adhesion of Charles to the Church of Rome had been put
forward as the reason for depriving him of the government of his
Province, and this reason was no longer in force, on petition of Lord
Guilford to the King, the government was restored to his grandson,
and Maryland, after twenty-five years of royal government, returned to
its ancient status. Gov. Hart, whose administration seems to have
been universally acceptable, was continued in his government under a
commission from the new Proprietary. An odd technical question arose
as to the style of the laws: whether, in the enacting clause, the Pro-
prietary's minority should or should not be alluded to. It was decided