Introduction. xli

The Upper House on December 8, passed a bill which had been drawn up
there " for billeting and quartering His Majesty's Forces within this Prov-
ince ", and sent it to the Lower House (p. 181), which returned the bill on
December 14, without a second reading with a message reminding the Upper
House that as a " money bill " it should take its " Rise in this House ", adding
that it was sorry to observe in that bill the proviso that if there were not enough
inns for soldiers in the towns to which they are sent for winter quarters, that
they may be billeted in such private houses as might be deemed fit. This the
Lower House declared " We apprehend is ... contrary to the Petition of
Right, and tends to a manifest infringement of the Liberties and Properties of
the subject" (pp. 351-352).

On December 9, the Governor sent to the Lower House " Mr. Giles's Ac-
count for Transporting hither, from the Head of the Bay, the Five Companies
of the Royal American Regiment, that are now Quartered in Annapolis ", and
informed the house that the King expects every province to defray all the
expenses of his troops when being transported from one part to another
of that province (p. 330).

The dispute was brought to a close at this session with a message on Decem-
ber 16, from the Governor to the Lower House that he was sending to Lord
Loudoun a copy of that portion of the rejected Supply bill dealing with the
billeting of troops (p. 386). To this the Lower House replied urging that
a copy of the entire bill be sent him (p. 387). A letter dated Decem-
ber 26, 1757, from Sharpe to Lord Baltimore's Secretary, Cecilius Calvert,
shows that there were then quartered in Annapolis nearly five hundred men
of the Royal American Regiment, for whose care the inhabitants, upon the re-
fusal of the Assembly to comply with their petitions for assistance, had made
provision at their own expense in the expectation that the Assembly would
later reimburse them (Arch. Md. ix, 121). At the February-March, 1758,
session, the Lower House ordered all persons who had claims against the
Public for furnishing quarters and provisions to His Majesty's Regular Forces,
to file them with the Commission on Accounts (p. 459).

ROMAN CATHOLICS

The Roman Catholic question was not allowed by the Lower House to sleep.
At the April-May 1757 session, the Committee on Aggrievances and Courts
of Justice on April 28 brought in a report to the house accompanied by several
depositions, to the effect that certain Catholics were conducting schools in
Baltimore County contrary to law (p. 79). A deposition made by a certain
Archibald Standiford declared that one Don. Connolly, who kept a school near
My Lady's Manor, had complained to Justice Boyce that Mr. Crabtrcc had
refused to pay him for the schooling of his children because he was a Papist
(p. 79). Thomas Chase, the rector of St. Paul's Parish, deposed that one
Mary Anne March, a reputed Papist, had opened a school in Baltimore Town,
and that the Protestant schoolmaster in that town had lost many of his scholars
to her, and that he, Chase, had applied for relief to the three magistrates living
in the town, but that " so far from putting a Stop to it, one of them sent his