Early Maryland County Courts.        liii

      peared before the Talbot County Court in June, 1670, and complained that he
      had been assigned by Edmondson to another master, Richard Holland, and
      that his leg had not been cured, and added that he was in “Grate Miszerry “,
      and petitioned for his freedom. The court asked Dr. Richard Tilghman for an
      expert opinion, who reported that the “Legg was very bad & Requiered speedy
      help “. The court freed Watson from his contract, and ordered Edmondson
      to pay him the usual “ freedom come & cloths” (Arch. Md. liv, 466-467).
        The findings of juries of inquest held by coroners, or other officers, over
      dead bodies were usually perfunctory and without medical details, but in the
      inquest upon the body of Samuel Yeoungman, a servant, who was said to have
      died as the result of blows inflicted upon him by his master, Francis Carpender
      of Talbot County, the medical findings as recorded in the court records for
      March, 1665/6, are of not a little medical interest, due to the presence as f ore-
      man of the jury of “Tho. Goddard, chirurgeon “. Carpender was sent up to
      the Provincial Court for trial, but we do not know the outcome there, as the
      proceedings of this court have not yet been printed for that date. The findings
      of the jury in part were: “Wee of the Jury having viewed the Corps of
      Samuell Yeoungman and finding A Depression in the Cranenum in on place,
      and another wound where all the musels flesh was Corrupted, and withall find
      ing Corrupt blood betweene the Dura and piawater [piamater] and the braine &
      severall other brusses in the head and body there for our virdict is that for want
      of Looking after the abovesaid wounds were the Cause of his death . . . Tho:
      Goddard Churgo foreman” (Arch. Md. liz', 390-391). The county levy for
      the year 1666 shows a payment of 100 pounds of tobacco to “the Chirurgeon
      that opened the skull of Carpends boy” (Arch. Md. liv, 410).
        References to the clergy or to churches are quite infrequent in these early
      county records. The Rev. Francis Doughtie, a clergyman of the Church of
      England, with a strong leaning towards Puritanism, was a minister in Charles
      Cotinty, who stirred up much trouble in both Maryland and Virginia. An inter
      esting sketch of his career in England, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Virginia,
      and Maryland, has been written by Louis Dow Scisco (Md. Hist. Mag., 1925,
      xxiii, pp. 155-162). He had been in Northampton County, Virginia, just before
      he came to Pickiawaxen in Charles County, Maryland in the late fifties, and
      returned to Virginia shortly before 1663 to take a parish in Rappahannock
      County (p. 396). Witchcraft was one of his obsessions. In 1657 he had
      Barbara Winbrow brought before the Northampton Court on suspicion of
      witchcraft, but the charge was apparently dropped (Bruce's Institutional His
      tory of Virginia, i, 280). In Charles County when Doughtie insinuated that
      Mrs. Joan Mitchell was a witch, he was promptly countered in a suit filed in
      September, 1661, by her for defamation of character, which is more fully dis
      cussed later (pp. lv, 139, 142-145, 156). After his return to Virginia he got
      into a dispute in 1668 with two of his Rappahannock vestry on account of
      his “ abstraceous from chants “, and was apparently obliged to leave that colony
      (Bruce's Institutional History of Virginia, i, 218-219).
        in the settlement of the estate of Mistress Frances Cox of Kent County, who
      had died sometime before August 15, 1648, an account filed December 19,