Kent County.               xv

   ing successively as “Sergeant of Train Bands “, Lieutenant of St. Clement's
   Hundred, and Captain and Commander of the Isle of Kent.
     Philip Conner (Conier) ( -1660), the seventh and last Commander of Kent,
   succeeded Vaughan as commander when, July 31, 1652, the latter was deposed
   by the Commissioners of the Parliament. He was an old resident of the Isle
   of Kent, appearing there as a freeman, February 18, 1638/9 (Arch. Md. i, 30),
   and as a patentee of Connor's Neck in 1640 (Kent Island Rent Roll MSS.
   f. 2). The first Kent court of which we have a record met at his house, January
   3, 1647/8 (p. 1). That he was selected Commander in 1652 by the Com-
   missioners of the Parliament when all his fellow justices were dropped, and
   that he continued on the bench, although not as commander, after the Proprie-
   tary government was restored, May 26, 1658, speaks well for the opinion in
   which he was held by both factions. When Vaughan was appointed presiding
   justice on May 26, 1658, Conner was included on the same commission and
   served on the court until his death in 1660. He was a burgess from Kent in
   1648-1649.
     Robert Dunn (1630-1676) was the presiding justice of Kent from 1669 to
   1671. He was born in 1630 (p. 65). He came into Maryland in 1649 and was
   doubtless one of the group of Puritans who came up from Virginia in that
   year and settled in Anne Arundel County, on Kent Island, and elsewhere in the
   Province. He was one of the Kent Islanders who recorded his allegiance to the
   Commonwealth of England in 1652 (p. 4). Dunn lived on Kent Island and
   died there May 12, 1676. The Provincial Court records show that he was
   appointed a justice of Kent, December 23, 1664 (Arch. Md. iii, 512), but the
   break in the Kent Court records from 1662 to 1668 makes the exact duration
   of his tenure uncertain. On April 16, 1669, however, he was appointed the
   presiding justice of Kent, and the county records show that he was still holding
   this position January 24, 1670/1 (pp. 260-306). Dunn was a burgess from
   Kent in 1663 and 1669 (Arch. Md. i, 460; ii, 157), and Sheriff in 1673.
     Thomas South (1618-1674) was the presiding justice of Kent in 1673.
   Nothing has been learned of his antecedants, but his depositions show that he
   was born about 1618. The land records show that he came to Maryland in
   1649, so was probably one of the group of Puritans who came up from Virginia
   in that year. He lived on the island, and in 1652 signed the oath of fidelity
   to the Commonwealth of England (p. 4). He was appointed a justice of Kent,
   November 18, 1671, and the presiding justice July 16, 1674, dying a few
   months afterwards. The provincial records show that he was not only justice
   of Kent but of Talbot and Cecil counties as well. He was one of the justices
   who sat at the October 1662 session of the Talbot court (p.356), and who
   continued to be a member of the court until November, 1669 (p. 445), when
   he disappears for a year, to reappear December 17, 1670, as a justice of Talbot
   (p. xxiii; Arch. Md. Ii, 348-349). On June 6, 1674, we find him commissioned
   a justice of Cecil, possibly having been sent there to help organize the
   court in this new county (Arch. Md. xv, 38). He figures prominently in the
   records of the Kent County Court, and of the Provincial Court between 1654