LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

                                          April 15, 1937.

    To the Maryland Historical Society,
       GENTLEMEN:

     This volume, LIV, of the Archives of Maryland, containing the proceedings
    of the county courts of Kent, Talbot, and Somerset, is to be regarded as the
    continuation of Volume LIII of the Archives, containing the proceedings of
    the Charles County Court and of the manorial court of St. Clement's Manor, St.
    Mary's County. Although bearing the publication date of 1936, the distribution
    of the latter volume has been held back so that both these volumes of county court
    records may reach the reader at the same time. This is advisable because the
    introductory notes by the editor on “Early Maryland County Courts “, prefac-
    ing Volume LIII, trace not only the general development of the county court
    in Maryland down to the end of the third quarter of the seventeenth century,
    but include also a general survey or analysis of many matters, judicial and
    civil, which came before the commissioners or justices of the four county
    courts of Charles, Kent, Talbot, and Somerset, which are recorded in both
    volumes. The reader of this volume, LIV, should therefore consult not only
    its index for direct references to its contents, but should also refer to the
    index of the preceding volume, LIII, for comments in the introductory notes
    to court entries contained in Volume LIV.
     With the publication of these two volumes of county court proceedings,
    the student of Maryland colonial law now has available in printed form a
    complete cross-section of the judicial system of Maryland in the seventeenth
    century from the highest to the lowest courts of the Province, and the student
    of social customs a record of very great interest. There are now in print and
    available for study the proceedings of the five Maryland courts of this century,
    viz.: (1) the Appellate Court of the Governor and Council sitting until 1694
    as the Upper House of the Assembly, and after this date under the name of the
    Court of Appeals, (2) the Provincial Court, or general law court of the
    Province, (3) the Court of Chancery, (4) the county courts of Charles, Kent,
    Talbot, and Somerset, (5) the manorial court of St. Clement's Manor.
     For a better understanding of the local backgrounds upon which the records
    of these four county courts are respectively projected and of the men who
    directed their activities, there will be found in the introductory sections of
    both volumes short historical summaries dealing with the origin and develop-