LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.


                                           December 15, 1936.
       To the Maryland Historical Society,
          GENTLEMEN:

         With the publication of volumes LIII and LIV of the Archives of Mary
       land, containing the proceedings of four mid-seventeenth-century county courts
       and one manorial court, the purpose of the Committee on Publication to present
       a complete cross section of the judicial system of Maryland in this century
       has been carried out. Students of the history of colonial law now have avail
       able in printed form a partial record of all the courts of the Province. But
       to an even larger number of readers these county records will prove of interest
       for the light they throw upon the early settlers in their human relations with one
       another, as well as for that shed upon the legal, political, and economic back
       ground on which their lives are here projected.
         The publication of these two volumes has been made possible by the help
       which the Committee on Publication has received from Mr. Louis Dow Scisco,
       who has served as associate editor in their preparation. He has not only
       deciphered and transcribed with meticulous accuracy the crabbed and often
       almost undecipherable seventeenth-century handwriting of various court clerks,
       but has made voluminous notes on the contents of the records, which have
       been of great assistance to the editor in the preparation of the introductory
       notes to the two volumes. Mr. Scisco has also prepared the indices. The com
       mittee is greatly indebted to Judge Carroll T. Bond, Chief Judge of the Mary
       land Court of Appeals and the recognized authority on early Maryland juris
       prudence, for the invaluable help he has given the editor in clearing up sundry
       obscure points relating to early legal procedure as brought out by these records
       of seventeenth-century Maryland county courts.
         Beginning with the highest, the courts of Maryland in the seventeenth
       century were: (1) the appellate court of the Governor and Council sitting
       as the Upper House down through the year 1694, and after this date sitting
       separately under the name of the Court of Appeals, (2) the Provincial Court,
       or general law court of the Province, (3) the Court of Chancery for hearing
       equity cases, (4) the several county courts, and (5) the manorial or leet courts
       which functioned on a few of the older and more important manors.