Kent County.              xix

  printed court record itself. Nearly an hundred pages of old Liber A, which
  was apparently intact when George A. Hanson published his Old Kent in
  1876, are now missing for the first seven years from 1648 to 1654. This gap
  is in part supplied, however, by abstracts, usually in much abbreviated form,
  from the original records interpolated by Hanson in his book, and in part by
  entries relating to land which were copied from Liber A by a court clerk in
  1727 in the Kent deed books. It is thought desirable to print here both Hanson's
  abstracts and the land notes.
    From 1654, when the original records now in the clerks' office begin, to 1676
  when the court minutes now printed end, the original records have been made use
  of. Unfortunately, however, there are three breaks. The first gap is from
  February to December, 1660, during the period of the Fendall “rebellion “,
  when the minutes were obviously deleted under the orders of the Governor and
  Council, dated December 11, 1661, that “All Acts and Orders entered in the
  tyme of the defection—be forthwith razed and torne from among the Records”
  (Arch. Md. xli, 379). The second break is for the six years from 1662 to
  1667, inclusive, and the third from 1672 to 1675. Thc records for the years
  covered by these breaks were missing when Hanson compiled his Old Kent in
  1876, so there is small chance that they are still in existence. In the case of the
  original court record from 1648 to 1654, which Hanson made use of, there
  is always the chance that it may turn up in the clerk's office or in private hands.
    In the Maryland Historical Magazine, XXI, for December 1926 (pp. 356-
  361), Mr. Scisco gives a calender of all the pre-Revolutionary Kent County
  records now in the Clerk's Office at Chestertown. From the proceedings of
  the Council and of the Provincial Court for the periods covered by these
  breaks in the Kent County records, some light is thrown upon the activities of
  the county court at those times.
    The Kent court record shows that the court clerks during the period covered
  by these records were: Robert Vaughan, 1651; Thomas Hynson, 1652-1653;
  Thomas Hill, 1654-1656; Thomas Hynson, 1656-1657; William Leeds, 1657-
  1658; John Coursey, 1658-1660; Tobias Wells, 1660-1662; (break); John
  Wright, 1667/8-1669; Disborough Bennett, 1669-1670; Peter Sayer, 1670/1-
  1674; Charles Bancks, 1674-1676.
    An estimate, although only an approximate one, of the population of Kent,
  based upon the number of tithables given in the levies during the period covered
  by these records, is of some interest. In 1653 the population of Kent Island
  was about 250 (p. 14); in 1660, Kent Island and the settlements on the main-
  land had a population of about 600 (p. 231); but in 1668, six years after
  Talbot had been taken from Kent, the population of what is now Kent County,
  and which then included Kent Island, was still only about 600. In 1670 the
  population was about 650, but by the next year had jumped to 1,000.