liv         The First Century of the Court of Chancery.

        (Arch. Md. xxviii, 57-59). Beginning in 1698, it is to be noted that the
        principal seal of the Province, for the previous six years usually called the
        Broad Seal, is again regularly referred to as the Great Seal.
          At the May 16, 1697, session of the Assembly an act was passed assigning
        certain rooms in the new State House at Annapolis for various purposes,
        including one for the keeping of the records of the Chancery Court (Arch. Md.,
        xix, 594-596). It seems likely that all the courts held their meetings in the
        Council Chamber.
          The records show that Henry Jowles continued to be referred to as Chancellor
        and Keeper of the Great Seal in 1697, 1698, and 1699. Nicholson was succeeded
        as Governor, January 2, 1698/9, by Nathaniel Blakiston, and at the Council
        meeting held that day Nicholson delivered the Great Seal of the Province to
        Blakiston and” acquaints him that he did appoint Col. Jowles to keep it whereto
        his Excellenecy the Colo Blakiston says a very good hand “, and delivered the
        Great Seal to Jowles (Arch. Md., xxv, 44, 51). Jowles last appears as Chancellor
        at a Court held May 29, 1799, and when the Court next met two months later,
        the Governor, Nathaniel Blakiston, had himself assumed the office (Chanc.
        Proc. P. C., 410, 413). Jowles who was also a member of the Council, died
        sometime between July 18 and December 3, 1700 (Arch. Md., xxv, 112). He
        was a lawyer by profession, as there can be no question that he was the same
        Henry Jowles, the barrister-at-law, who was admitted to Gray's Inn, July 3,
        1663, and was then described as the son of John Jowles, late of Newington
        Butts, Surrey (E. Alfred Jones: American Members of the Inns of Court,
        1924. 109-110). He married in 1678 in Maryland, probably soon after his
        arrival, Sybil, the widow of William Groome of Calvert County.
          It will be recalled that when Nicholson reorganized the Court of Chancery in
        1694, and reduced its size to three, only Jowles the Chancellor, who also presided,
        was of the Council, the two associate justices not being members of this body.
        When Nathaniel Blakiston was sent from England to succeed Nicholson as
        Governor in 1699, he assumed the Chancellorship himself, and had sit with him
        as associate justices two, or occasionally three, members of the Council, and
        from this time until 1720, when the Court of Chancery finally became a one-man
        Court with William Holland sitting alone as Chancellor, the associate justices
        seem to have always been chosen from the members of the Council, who were
        apparently only designated and not especially commissioned to sit in Chancery,
        although the Council records for this period are too fragmentary to allow one
        to be dogmatic on this point.
          The records of the Court of Chancery show that at the session of August
        29, 1699, Gov. Nathaniel Blakiston is referred to as the Keeper of the Great
        Seal, with Col. Thomas Tench and Major John Hammond of the Council
        “assistant justices “, as they are called. These three sat as the court at the
        October and December sessions of 1700, and at the April 1701 session. Gov.
        Blakiston continued to preside in the court, until he went to England in the
        summer of 1702 to become the Resident Agent of Maryland there. Hammond
        nearly always sat with the Governor, as also did a third member of the Council,
        usually Robert Smith, although once, on June 25, 1700, Thomas Tasker of the
        Council appears as an “associate justice” (Chanc. Proc. P. C., 413-467).