Letter of Transmittal. xi

County party, and that the remaining third were sympathetic in varying degrees
with the Proprietary government, but when popular passions were aroused
there were considerable defections from this minority to the County party.
The Assembly with which we are concerned had been elected in the autumn of
1754 and had held its first session in December of that year. The sessions which
this volume records are the second and third held in 1755 and the fourth and
fifth held in 1756.

The committees which had been appointed at the first session and the rules
then adopted were continued with few changes during our period. The fourteen
counties were represented by four members each and the city of Annapolis by
two members. As was to be expected, the representatives of Annapolis were
always of the Proprietary party. Henry Hooper of Dorchester County was
Speaker of the first four sessions, but on account of ill-health was succeeded at
the September-October session of 1756 by Alexander Williamson of Kent
County. Conspicuous members of the Lower House during this period were
Walter Dulany and Stephen Bordley, both of Annapolis, the place of the latter
being filled at one of the later sessions by Daniel Dulany, the younger, perhaps
its most distinguished member. These three were all of the Proprietary party.
Dr. Charles Carroll of Annapolis was one of the representatives from Anne
Arundel County, and after his death in 1755 his son, Charles Carroll, the
Barrister, later to be the author of the Declaration of Rights, succeeded him.
Both father and son were among the leaders of the County party. William
Fitzhugh of Calvert, Philip Hammond and Henry Hall of Anne Arundel,
Matthew Tilghman and Edward Tilghman of Queen Anne's, Lloyd Buchanan
of Baltimore, William Murdoch of Prince George's, and John Dennis and
Robert Jenckins Henry of Somerset, were conspicuous in the Lower House.
In 1756 Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer, who was later to sign the Constitution
of the United States for Maryland, first appeared upon the political scene. Vot-
ing almost invariably with the Proprietary party in addition to the Dulanys and
Bordley were Lloyd Buchanan of Baltimore County, Charles Goldsborough of
Dorchester County, Henry Casson and John Bracco of Queen Anne's County,
and Robert Jenckins Henry of Somerset County. The Tilghmans, Murdock, and
Fitzhugh were conspicuous leaders of the County party. Thomas Johnson, Jr.,
who was later to be the first Revolutionary governor of Maryland, made his
public appearance at this time as Clerk of the Committee on Ways and Means
of the Lower House, although not yet as a delegate to that body.

The second session of the Assembly elected in 1754 met on February 22,
1755,soon after Governor Sharpe had returned from New York, where he and
other colonial governors had attended a council of war held by Shirley. The
previous session had been prorogued in disgust by Governor Sharpe on Decem-