Letter of Transmittal.             xxv






       Mary's County was sued for defamation of character by Elinor Spinke, who
       seems to have been a former servant of Barber. In a case which had been heard
       some time previously in the St. Mary's County Court in which Barber was the
       defendant, Mrs. Spinke had been a witness for the plaintiff, and had been called
       foul names by Barber, who also made serious charges against her moral charac
       ter, and accused her of perjury. The case came up again at the February, 1664,
       session of the court, and Mrs. Spinke was awarded thirty thousand pounds of
       tobacco as damages. A curious feature of the trial was the demand of the jury,
       which the court agreed to, that they should be paid thirty pounds of tobacco each
       for their services in the case before rendering their verdict (pages 37, 78-80,
       115-1 18, 145-146). Barber then appealed to the Upper House of the Assembly,
       where the case was heard and decided in September, 1664. Col. William Evans
       had been the attorney for Mrs. Spinke when the case was heard in the Provincial
       Court, but she was represented by William Calvert before the Upper House.
       Thomas Notley was Dr. Barber's attorney. On the ground that the differences
       between the writ and the declaration in the case amounted to serious error, the
       House reversed the decision of the Provincial Court, and set aside the judg
       ment in favor of Mrs. Spinke on these grounds (Arch. Md. I, 509-522).
       Doubtless as the result of the ill feeling aroused by the suit just outlined the
       trustees for the wife of Dr. Luke Barber sued Henry Spinke for three thousand
       pounds of tobacco “due on a bill,” at the June, 1664, session of the St. Mary's
       County Court. While the case was in this court Spinke appealed to the Prov
       incial Court, where it was heard at the July, 1664, session, and decided that
       the “bill,” which was originally due to Barber himself and had been assigned
       by him to the trustees of his wife without Spinke's consent, was null and void
       (pages 238-239). The trustees for Mrs. Barber then entered an appeal to the
       Upper House of the Assembly, but as no reference to it appears on the records
       of the House, it is probable that it was dropped when this body annulled the
       large award for damages against Barber noted in the last suit.
         An early instance of forgery came before the court in September, 1663, when
       Elizabeth Green was indicted by the grand jury for offering a forged receipt
       which she had caused her servant boy to pen for her. At a later session she was
       found guilty by a jury and sentenced to be set in the pillory, to lose one ear, and
       serve twelve months in jail (pages 76, 77, 87). In September, 1663, Dr. John, or
       Jacob, Lumbrozo, a Jewish physician, and possibly the first Jewish citizen of
       Maryland, appeared as a witness against John Legatt, the minister charged with
       performing a marriage ceremony without license (page 84). Lumbrozo's name
       constantly appears in these records as physician, witness, litigant, and attorney.
       Lumbrozo, an interesting figure, was a Portuguese Jew from Lisbon, who had
       probably come to Maryland in the early fifties. He had been charged in 1658
       with blasphemy, under the so-called Toleration Act of 1649, for having spoken
       in a way which was interpreted by a hearer as questioning the divinity of Christ.
       After his indictment, and before he was brought to trial, proceedings were
       stopped by the timely arrival of Cromwell's proclamation of amnesty prohibiting
       prosecutions for religious opinions. Denization papers had been issued to
       Lumbrozo in 1663, and at the time when he figures in the cases just mentioned,
       he was apparently in good standing and a prominent resident of Charles County.