xxii       Early Maryland County Courts.

           court Acction be Crimminall for a further triall at the proventiall Court or not “.
           The jury brought in a verdict to the effect “that we do not find it valluable
           to Reach the law of fellony Conserninge the goods that John Whit and Sarah
           Tayler Did Cary away from Capt Thomas Brodnox “. The court then declared
           that as the verdict did not find the accused guilty of felony according to the
           indictment, it would limit itself to censure, and an order that the stolen goods
           and the servants be returned to their master (Arch. Md. liv, 213). It is obvious
           that the value placed by the jury upon the articles stolen was less than their real
           worth, and that the sympathy of the jurymen for the victims of a notoriously
           merciless master and mistress was the cause of the lenient verdict. The story
           of Sarah Taylor and her difficulties with the Bradnox family is referred to
           more fully elsewhere (pp. xxxiii-xxxiv; Arch. Md. liv, 167, 167-169, 171,
       178-180,  213, 225, 234).
            Thomas Ward was brought betore the Kent County Cuut t on August 12,
          1652, “upon suspicion of felony “, in having caused the death of a maidservant
          as the result of a severe flogging administered by Ward and his wife. The
          jury found that the death had not been caused directly by this flogging, but
          that it was “unreasonable considering her weak estate of body “. The court
          then imposed a fine of 300 pounds of tobacco for this “unchristianlike pun
          ishment” (Arch. Md. liv, 9). A county court of course did not have jurisdic
          tion in a felony, and had the jury found that the death was the result of the
          injuries inflicted, the cause would have gone up at once to the Provincial Court
          for trial. At this same session of the Kent County Court Captain Thomas
          Bradnox, whose cruel treatment of his servants at a later period has just been
          referred to, was brought before the court on suspicion of having caused the
          death of his servant, James Wilson, a “Scot “, by flogging, but a jury found
          that the dropsy or scurvy from which the man suffered, and not the “stripes”
          which he had received, was the cause of his death. (Arch. Md. liv, 8-9). In
          these two cases the juries seem to have functioned as grand juries although the
          evidence was spread upon the court minutes.
            At the July 1663 Charles County Court, Jacob Lumbrozo, who appears vari
          ously as physician, attorney, and storekeeper, and whose unsavory career is
          referred to more fully later (pp. 1-li), was charged before the justices with
          having brought on a criminal abortion upon his maidservant, Elizabeth Wild,
          who, subsequent to the time the alleged abortion occurred, but before he was
          brought into court, had married him. He was presented by a jury of twelve
          which rendered a “verdict” that he had given her physic to destroy the child
          of which she had been pregnant by him, and the case was ordered up to the
          Provincial Court for trial (pp. 387-391). As it did not come up in the higher
          court, however, it was probably dropped because he had disqualified the prin
          cipal witness against him by marrying her. In this case we have a jury acting
          as a presenting body and also rendering a verdict.
           It would appear that in all the seven cases just summarized the suspicion of
          felony was involved. In two of the three hog-stealing cases we have a formal
          indictment by the Attorney-General, followed by the impanelling of a jury
          which brought in a true bill, and after considering the evidence followed this