Early Maryland County Courts.    xxiii

       with a verdict fixing the guilt of the accused and the value of the animals stolen,
       which was apparently less than made the offence a felony; thereupon the court
       awarded damages to the owner, a fee to the informer, and a punitive fine to
       the Lord Proprietary based upon the valuation of the jury. It would also appear
       that had the jury found the accused guilty of felony by placing a high value
       upon the hogs, the case would have automatically gone up to the Provincial
       Court for a trial on this charge. In this instance the jury would appear to have
       functioned both as a grand jury and a petit jury. A verdict of “not guilty”
       in the third case, one also tried upon “suspicion of felony “, leaves us uncer
       tain whether, had the jury found the accused guilty of hog-stealing, it would
       have exercised the dual functions which are to be found in the first two cases.
       In the fourth case, that of servants brought before the county court on what
       was obviously suspicion of felony, the jury placed a value upon the goods
       stolen which did not bring the accused within the jurisdiction of the Provincial
       Court. In this instance it also would seem to have exercised a dual function,
       in not only determining whether the crime were a felony but also in bringing
       in a verdict fixing the value of the articles stolen. In the two cases where mas
       ters were brought before the court upon “suspicion of felony” in having
       caused the deaths of servants which they had unmercifully beaten, the juries
       seem to have been acting rather as grand juries, or juries of inquest, than as
       petit juries. Certainly county court and jury could not have proceeded to try
       either case had the question of murder entered. In the Lumbrozo case the
       accused was found guilty of having brought on an abortion, which was a felony,
       and the case was at once sent up to the Provincial Court. Here the jury seems
       to have acted as a grand jury. In none of the seven cases, however, does the
       usual secrecy now exercised by a grand jury seem to have been observed.
         Frequent mention is found in these county records of in quests held by juries
       functioning as coroner's juries, although they are not so designated, over the
       bodies of persons dead from violence, drowning, or by suicide or suspected sui
       cide. Before 1666 when the act providing for the regular appointment of
       coroners was passed (Arch. Md. ii, 130-131), juries of inquest, as they were
       usually called, were held by sheriffs, justices, or constables, acting as coroners.
       The first record of a coroner's jury was one held in January 1637/8 (Arch. Md.
       iv, 9). In at least one instance an autopsy was held and the brain examined
       (Arch. Md. liv, 390-391). The duties of the coroner are discussed fully later
       (p. xli). Where the finding of the jury was suicide, a frequent verdict was to
       the effect that the deceased was a felo de se, or as the Talbot County clerk some
       times wrote it, a” fielo de si “, with the recommendation that a Christian burial
       ought, or ought not, to be accorded, although there is no record of a suicide
       ordered buried at the cross-roads. A verdict of felo de Se, or self-murder,
       carried with it in Maryland at this period the confiscation of the suicide's
       properties to the Lord Proprietary (Arch. Md. liv, 21), as it would in England
       have done to the Crown. In instances of death by misadventure, a falling
       tree or other object responsible for the fatality, is sometimes referred to in the
       verdict as a deodand, written “Devo Dane” (Arch. Md. liv, 412.)