Letter of Transmittal.      xiii

   Court, and as they were the same men who composed the Council and the
   Upper House of the Assembly, sessions of the Court of Chancery and of the
   Provincial Court (and even of the Council), were frequently joint sessions,
   the clerk's entries then reading thus: “At a Court held for the Chancery and
   Provincial Court “. Separate sessions, however, if the amount of business
   to be transacted was large, were often held for each court. As stated previ-
   ously beginning in 1669 separate record books were kept for the Chancery and
   the Provincial Court, although until 1694 the same individual served as Register
   or Clerk for both. During the period covered by this volume the registers in
   Chancery were Robert Carvile (1669-1670), Thomas Cabewood (1670-1671),
   Robert Ridgely (1671-1674), John Bloomfield (1674-1678), and Nicholas
   Painter (1678-1682).
     All the members of the Court of Chancery during our decade held other
   prominent offices, and, with few exceptions, were extensive land planters with
   much common sense and a varying amount of legal training to guide them.
   The records of the period show that when difficult legal questions came up
   they often sought the advice of the lawyers practicing before the courts, and
   of the Proprietary's Attorney General and Solicitor General. lack of space
   does not permit much more than a mere recital of the names of the various
   councillors who at this period sat on the two courts as associate justices. The
   Council was a small body and we rarely find more than five or six judges sitting
   at any one session of the Chancery Court. When this volume opens in 1669,
   the members of the Court were Gov. Charles Calvert, Chief Judge in Equity,
   Philip Calvert, Chancellor, with three members of the Council sitting as asso-
   ciate justices, whose years of service are given following their names. These
   were, Jerome White (1664-1670), Baker Brooke (1658-1679), and Thomas
   Truman (1665-1676). In December 1669, William Calvert (1669-1682), a
   nephew of Cecilius, the Lord Proprietary, and a practicing attorney, was sworn
   in as a member of the court, and Samuel Chew (1669-1677), a prominent
   planter of Anne Arundel County, was sworn in as a justice. In December 1670,
   Sir William Talbot, Baronet (1670-1671), the Provincial Secretary and a
   relative of the Proprietary, and Edward Fitzherbert (1670-1671), were added
   to the Council and became members of the court. Talbot and White both dis-
   appeared from the court early in 1671. Jesse Wharton, at one time President
   of the Council, became a member of the court in December 1672, and served
   until May 1677; Henry Coursey, who was on the Council as early as 1660,
   remained with some apparent short breaks until 1688. Henry Rozer first ap-
   pears as a justice of the court in October 1667 and served until 1681; he had
   been admitted an attorney, October 16, 1666 (Prov. Ct. Proc., FF, 340).
   Thomas Taylor was a justice of the court from 1673 to 1678.