xxviii     Early Maryland County Courts.


          cutor, and had a jury impanelled to determine whether the value of the animals
          killed made the offence a felony (pp. 544-549, 55 1-553).
            Few acts of violence seem to have come up before the county courts, those
          of a serious nature having gone directly to the Provincial Court. A consider
          able number of minor breaches of the peace, however, appear on the record.
          Drunkenness, profanity, and Sabbath-breaking cases were rather infrequent,
          the punishment lying in the discretion of the court, which might impose a small
          fine, or order the culprit to the whipping-post, although the latter penalty seems
          to have been confined to servants and others of the lower classes. There
          is one case of forgery. In a few instances rows developed at a convivial gather
          ing where liquor flowed too freely, and were dealt with rather leniently by
          the court. Planters were frequently brought before the county court and fined
          for failure to plant the acreage of corn required by law. Acts passed in 1638/9,
          1640, 1642, 1649 and 1654, made it obligatory upon the tobacco grower to
          plant two acres of corn for every taxable person employed on the plantation,
          both indentured male servants and negroes of both sexes being reckoned as
          taxable (Arch. Md. i, 79, 95, 251, 349). There are a number of cases in all
          four counties where fines were imposed for violation of these corn laws.
            Bastardy cases are fairly numerous and in nearly all instances the women
          involved were servants. The father was also usually a servant, but there are two
          instances in which masters were charged with having fathered the child. The
          law regarding bastardy, although several times amended, had a fourfold appli
          cation—as it related to the mother, to the father, to the master if either the
          mother or the father were a servant, and to the people of the Province
          in general. The acts of 1658 and 1662 clearly define the damages for which
          the father was liable to the mother and to the master (Arch. Md. i, 373, 441-
          442). These acts were revised in 1671 (Arch. Md. ii, 396-397). They pro
          vided that if the woman were seduced by an unmarried freeman upon promise
          of marriage, he could right himself with her by marriage, and with the master
          by paying damages for the loss of her services. If the father were a servant he
          was liable to the woman's master for half damages. In a case in the Somerset
          County Court a woman, apparently not a servant, was ordered to pay a fine of
          500 pounds of tobacco, or receive a whipping, or to work on the public high
          way (Arch. Md. liv, 642, 659, 671). In one instance the father of the child
          gave bond not only to reimburse the master for the woman's loss of time, but a
          further bond for damages in case she were to die within one month from the
          time of her confinement (Arch. Md. liv, 622). In still another Somerset County
          case where neither party is stated to have been a servant, the man was ordered
          to pay a fine of 1000 pounds of tobacco, and the woman 500 pounds, or were
          these fines not paid, the offenders were to be whipped (Arch. Md. liv, 67 1-672,
          691).

            The case of Lucy Stratton, brought before the Charles County Court by war
          rant from Gov. Fendall on charges of bastardy and of drying up her milk at
          the risk of her child's life, came before the court at its November, 1658, ses
          sion. Arthur Turner, a planter, who, she declared, was the father, at first
          denied the child's paternity, and she was given thirty lashes (p. 28). At the two