Early Maryland County Courts.        xix

       but twelve members (Arch. Md. iv, 237, 240, 241, 260, 447). In the county
       courts, and apparently sometimes in the Provincial Court, down through the
       fifties the usual method of presentment in criminal cases appears not to have
       been by indictment by a grand jury, but by “information” or “presentment”
       to the court by a justice, a constable, or a sheriff. The explanation for the
       infrequent impanelling of grand juries in the county courts in these early days
       was doubtless the cost of the procedure. There seems to have been no Mary
       land law requiring the regular convening of grand juries until 1666.
         It would appear that in criminal cases brought before the Provincial Court
       the cost of a grand jury at first fell entirely upon the inhabitants of St. Mary's
       County, where this court usually held its sessions, for at the April 1662 session
       of the General Assembly a petition was presented asking that the charge there
       after be made “general” throughout the Province, so that all the costs might
       not fall upon this one county. The Upper House in an “answere” to this
       petition which it sent to the Lower House on April II, 1662, declared that
       “Every County in the Province by the lawe of England now admitted ought
       and must Impannell a Grand Jury Quarterly to enquire soe that the charge
       is equall in all Countyes” (Arch. Md. i, 437-438), indicating that the county
       courts had been derelict in not carrying out the requirements of the “ lawe of
       England “, as apparently the Provincial Court occasionally had been. The
       records of the Provincial Court show that after 1662 those who composed the
       grand juries at St. Mary's were often summoned not only from that county but
       also from other counties by their respective sheriffs. These records indicate,
       however, that the county courts continued to ignore the “lawe of England”
       in this respect until 1666, when an act of the Assembly made regular meetings
       of the grand jury obligatory.
         Legal provision for regular meetings of the grand jury in the counties is to
       be found hidden away in an “Act against hog-stealers “, passed at the April—
       May 1666 session of the Assembly, which provided for “the better Execucön
       of this and all other Good Lawes in this province” that every county court held
       half-yearly in March and November shall enquire by a grand jury of all offences
       committed against this and all other good laws of the Province, the respective
       sheriffs to impanel such juries of inquest, which shall examine all the constables
       for the discovery of offenders in the county, and that all presentments that
       concern life or member be returned by the county clerk to the next Provincial
       Court (Arch. Md. ii, 141-142). It is doubtless from this time that regular
       meetings of the grand juries in the counties date, but it would appear that
       these meetings were secret and no record kept of them, although in some seven
       cases spread in full on the record to be presently referred to, it is difficult to
       decide whether we are dealing with a petit jury, or a grand jury, or a jury func
       tioning in both capacities (pp. xxi-xxiii).
         The earliest definite reference in these county records to what is without
       question a grand jury, is to be found at the October 1662 session of the Charles
       County Court, where “the Jury of Inquest” of twelve members presented sev
       eral offenders for swearing, bigamy, Sabbath-breaking, and hog-stealing (pp.
       250-25 1). It is obvious that “the Jury of Inquest” in this instance was a