Letter of Transmittal.              ix

       comparatively minor judicial functions exercised by the manorial or hundred
       courts, the court of the Governor and Council sitting there was to administer
       justice in all important local St. Mary's affairs, and was also to have original
       jurisdiction in Kent in civil cases involving more than ten pounds sterling, and
       in criminal cases involving loss of life or member.
         Coincident with the establishment of a county form of government in
       St. Mary's, the general court of the Province came to be known as the County
       Court, and is thus called when it met there February 12, 1638 (Arch. Md.
       IV, 21). A year later at the February, 1639, session of the Assembly, there
       were introduced four bills, creating with clearly defined powers a County Court,
       a Chancery Court, an Admiralty Court and a Prætorial Court (Arch. Md. I, 47,
       49, 46, 50). These bills, together with many others regulating in detail the
       Provincial government, failed of passage, doubtless because the Proprietary
       did not wish to have his powers limited by the Assembly in respect to his
       rights under the Charter. A general bill was allowed to pass, however, which
       confirmed in the Governor and Council among other things, general judicial
       powers in all civil, testamentary and criminal cases (Arch. Md. I, 83-4).
         The court of general jurisdiction, known as the County Court after the
       organization early in 1638 of St. Mary's County, unquestionably lost this desig
       nation and became the Provincial Court sometime in the three year period
       between 1640 and 1642 inclusive, when Kent ceased to be a hundred of
       St. Mary's and was also given a county status. This organization of Kent as
       a county apparently took place in 1640. It is difficult to fix the exact date with
       certainty because the Provincial records for these three years, especially those
        of the Council, are very fragmentary. The first specific reference to Kent as
       a county is rather casual, when, July 18, 1642, burgesses representing Kent
       County were sworn in as such (Arch. Md. I, 129). There is strong evidence,
       however, from the wording of certain acts, that Kent had acquired a county
       status as early as 1640, for in an act passed at the October session of that
       year reference is made to the “commander of every county,” at the August 1641
       session an act was passed directing the sheriff of “every county” to perform
       certain duties, and again at the March, 1642, session an act refers to “any
       county of the Province” (Arch. Md. 1, 97, io8, 123). While these laws may
       have been enacted merely in anticipation of the erection of other counties in
       addition to St. Mary's County, it seems more likely that St. Mary's and Kent
       were both fully organized counties when the act of October, 1640, was passed.
       With two counties in existence, to continue to call the general court the County
       Court would have been absurd, so the County Court became the Provincial
       Court, and the former name the designation of the courts of local and inferior
       jurisdiction in the several counties as they were organized, except that in the
       case of St. Mary's the Provincial Court, which usually sat there, for a few
       years remained the court of original jurisdiction for this county. The first
       specific use of the designation Provincial Court is to be found in an act intro
       duced into the Assembly July 20, 1642, which became a law, entitled “An Act
       for Judges,” in which a clear distinction is made between the “Provincial