Letter of Transmittal.             xix





       as his attorney. It was urged by Nicholds that the indenture be declared invalid
       because no consideration was named in it and because the girl had not been
       bound before a magistrate. The court by a vote of three to two, the Chancellor
       and the Governor, voting with the majority, held that it was valid and Hester
       was required to serve out her seven years (pages 122, 137). We do not know
       whether West waited and married her or not.
         Sitting as a Court of Chancery, in September, 1663, an interesting case
       involving the rights of an indentured servant was heard by the court. Francis
       Gunby, or Gomby, by an indenture recorded in the city of Bristol, England,
       had bound himself to Richard Deaver of Anne Arundel County to serve him for
       four years as a joiner, and to work as a joiner exclusively, and to receive from
       Deaver a third part of his gains. Gunby complained that he was sold from one
       master to another, that his indenture had been stolen from him while he was
       sick, and that the conditions of his servitude had not be respected by his
       masters. He prays for relief (pages 103-104, 140-141, 192, 236). We do not
       know the outcome of the case as at the time the last reference is made to it in
       the records, it is marked “noe reture.”
         In a case heard on appeal from one of the county courts to the Provincial
       Court at the September session Councillor Thomas Gerard, who figures as one
       of the witnesses, gives an interesting picture of the arrival of a certain Captain
       Hinfield at Gerard's quarters at Mattapony with a number of Irish servants
       for sale (page I23). A rather horrible example of the cruelty of which the
       early records show indentured servants were not infrequently the victims, is
       illustrated in the case of Alice Sandford, a maid servant, who died after a severe
       beating administered by hen master, Pope Alvey of St. Mary's county. The de
       tails of the case are especially revolting. The jury of inquest found that she ap
       peared to have come to her death as the result of ill treatment, and at a court held
       in July, 1664, the jury found Alvey guilty of murder. He craved the “ benefit of
       clergy,” however, and after demonstrating his ability to read the “booke,” he
       was “ forthwith burned in the brawne of his righte hande with a red hott iron,”
       and released. At the March, 1665, session of the court a certain Paul Marsh
       petitions the court to require Alvey, to whom he had hired a servant some time
       previously, to give bond for the latter's safe return, as it was currently reported
       that in addition to causing the death of a servant for which he was recently
       punished he had maltreated another man servant so that he died, soon after
       wards. At the October, 1665, session Mordecai Hammond instituted fore
       closure proceedings on a mortgage upon some of Alvey's property. It was
       necessary that legal delivery of the land to Hammond be proven, and it was
       in this case that several witnesses testified that delivery was made by seizin,
       Alvey handing to Hammond a tin funnel, or as one witness described the object,
       a tin candlestick. We find Alvey in serious trouble again. A short while later
       at the January, 1666, session of the court, he was indicted and tried for stealing
       and slaughtering a cow belonging to Colonel William Evans. The court clerk
       describes the trial in great detail, and does so in a very modern journalistic
       style. Under the English law then in force the death penalty was provided
       for such a serious theft as this. For some reason the jury, notwithstanding