xx                     Early Maryland County Courts.

          grand jury. The first grand jury mentioned in Somerset County was on Nov.
          27, 1666, when “Mr. Steven Horssi [Horsey], high Sheriffe prsented A Jury
          of Inquest who were sworne “. Then follows a list of twelve jurors and the
          form of “The Oath of the Jury of Enquest “. This body was ordered to meet
          the following month, and certain absent constables to be summoned before
          it (Arch. Md. liv, 648-649). No record of a jury under the name, grand jury,
          having been convened in Talbot County occurs before 1671, when a “jury of
          inquest” in November brought several presentments for bastardy, and in 1672
          the county levy shows an entry of 480 pounds of tobacco paid out for sum
          moning the grand jury; and at the August 1672 session reference is made to the
          “last grand jury “. (Arch. Md. liv, 513, 544, 532). At a session of the Tal
          bot County Court held in March 1665/6, the findings of a” jury “, which served
          as a jury of inquest upon the body of a servant dead of blows upon the head in
          flicted by his master Francis Carpender, although rendered as a “verdict “, re
          sulted in the court binding “ over the said Carpender to answere att the
          Provinceall Court “. (Arch. Md. liv 390-391). in Kent the first reference
          specifically to a grand jury by name was in July 1675 when presentments were
          made by this body on the information of a constable (Arch. Md. liv, 324).
            Trial by jury was made use of in Maryland from the earliest times in the
          general or Provincial court in both civil and criminal cases. Under the act of
          1642 it was specifically provided that where the judge, plaintiff, or defendant
          required it, the cause should be tried before a jury (Arch. Md., i, 151). We thus
          find an early use of the system, still in vogue in Maryland, of giving the accused
          in criminal cases, even when capital punishment may be the penalty, the choice
          between trial by jury or before the court. In the county courts, as these rec
          ords disclose, in civil cases either the plaintiff, defendant, or the court itself,
          might demand that a jury be impanelled, although it was usually the plain
          tiff who asked a jury trial. The records of these four county courts show that
          some fifty civil cases were tried by juries.
            No mention is made in the provincial records of payment to jurymen for
          their services until the session of the Provincial Court held, February 2, 1663/4,
          when in two suits the jury declared that they had been “detayned here ever
          since yesterday att noone, to the lett & hinderance of our goeing about our owne
          busines “, and asked the court to allow each juryman thirty pounds of tobacco
          before their verdict was rendered, this to be paid by the “ party cast in this
          suite “. The court granted the request, and thereafter this custom seems to
          have become established in civil suits (Arch. Md. xlix, 143, 146). At the Sep
          tember 13, 1664, meeting of the Charles County Court a similar request was
          made by a jury “becaus the provinciall Court hath ordered the same in
          the licke Cases without which order the forman woold not deliver in thear
          Verdit “. Although Mr. William Marshall, one of the county justices, dis
          sented, the court so ordered (p. 515). In other civil suits heard later by this
          same court payments to jurymen were allowed (pp. 543, 603), so that it would
          appear that the custom was now well established. There is no record, however,
          of payment to county juries in criminal cases. In the Kent County levy for
          166o we find an allowance of 200 pounds of tobacco “for four Gallons of