xxiv          Letter of Transmittal.






              At this same session a certain Hannah Lee petitioned the court to enforce
            payment to her by the sheriff of Charles County of twelve thousand pounds
            of tobacco, due her in payment for the house sold by her to the Province for use
            as a State House, and the court directed the sheriff to levy against the taxable
            inhabitants, and to make payment to her (page 73). Records of the General
            Assembly show that an act had been passed at the April, 1662, session, author
            izing the purchase of this house and plantation at St. Mary's, then owned and
            occupied by Hannah Lee, the widow of Hugh Lee, the house to be used for
            meetings of the Provincial Court and of the Assembly, and also as a prison,
            with the understanding that the widow was to maintain the house and keep
            tavern there for three years, the purchase price to be met by a poll tax upon
            all the taxable inhabitants of the Province (Arch. Md. I, 445-456). Evidently
            the sheriff had been slow in making collections and in his payments to the
            widow. Not long after this episode Hannah married her servant, a certain Wil
            liam Price of Charles County, and at the December, 1664, session, Price and his
            wife were summoned before the court for failing to carry out their contract to
            cover in the roof of the State House, and Price was put in the sheriff's custody
            until the contract should be fulfilled (pages 344, 368, 395, 396, 397). Troubles
            now descended in rapid succession upon Price and his wife Hannah. They were
            summoned before the court in June, 1664, upon the complaint of the guardian of
            a boy, Sampson Cooper. It was shown that the father of Cooper, who bore the
            same name, had died in Virginia leaving express instructions in his will that
            his former partner Hugh Lee should have nothing to do with the settlement
            of his estate, and that Lee had fled to Maryland with young Cooper, taking
            with him valuable papers and portable property belonging to Cooper's estate.
            Lee died not long afterwards in Maryland, and William Price, Hannah's recently
            acquired husband, was now ordered to make an accounting of Cooper's estate
            (pages 221-223, 242, 273-275, 315, 399-400, 525). About the same time the
            Prices were sued by a certain William Hollingsworth of Salem, New England,
            for sundry debts which Hannah, before her marriage to Price, had owed to
            Hollingsworth. The case came up before the Provincial Court at the January,
            1666, session, possibly on an appeal from a lower court (pages 377, 378, 449,
            450, 453-455). From what follows it would appear that Hannah had then been
            in prison for some time when this last suit was entered, but whether on account
            of her failure to live up to her contract with the Province to cover the State
            House, or for her debt to the Cooper estate, or that to Hollingsworth, is not
            clear. Nor is it clear at this time whether William Price was in jail with his
            wife. Be all this as it may be, we find her petitioning the Provincial Court at
            the January, 1666, session and complaining from the jail, where she was in
            confinement, that she had worn out her clothes and was in great distress because
            of that fact, and requesting the court to settle the case promptly, or provide
            clothes for her. The court then ordered the sheriff to levy on the property of
            her husband William Price to provide her with clothes (page 566). The case
            does not appear to have been finally settled when the records of the court
            included in this volume come to an end.
              A suit asking heavy damages for slander was brought before the September,
            1663, session of the court. Dr. Luke Barber, a very prominent resident of St.