Introduction. xv

Others prominent on the Proprietary side were Edmund Key, George Plater,
and Thomas Greenfield of Saint Mary's, Colonel William Fitzhugh and Benja-
min Mackall of Calvert, Pollard Edmondson, Woolman Gibson, and Samuel
Bowman of Talbot, Henry Waggaman, Levin Gale, and Samuel Wilson of
Somerset, and Zadock Purnell of Worcester County.

Members of the Lower House qualified by taking the usual oaths of fidelity,
subscribing to the oath of abjuration, and signing the test. Colonel Henry
Hooper of Dorchester County was elected Speaker and after his choice was
approved by the Governor, as custom required, he was sworn in. Michael
Macnemara, an aggressive supporter of the popular party, who for years had
served as Clerk, was again chosen to fill this position and took the special oath
qualifying him as Clerk (p. 14). The Rev. Clement Brooke of Annapolis,
rector of St. Anne's Parish, Anne Arundel County, was chosen to read prayers
twice daily (p. 18). Captain Robert Sanders and Andrew Buchanan were
selected respectively Sergeant-at-arms and Door-Keeper, and took the special
oaths of those offices (p. 15). Rules of order were adopted similar to those in
use at previous sessions, including among others a rule forbidding reference to
another member by his proper name, "reviling speeches," or entering "into the
House of Assembly while the same is Sitting with Sword or other Weapon";
and members were to be fined for non-attendance.

The Lower House adopted a series of resolutions similar to those often
passed at the first meeting following the election of a new Assembly, which
may be regarded in a sense as a bill of rights and as a declaration of inde-
pendance of Proprietary interference. These resolves related to the independ-
ence of the judiciary, the right of the inhabitants as free citizens of a free
English colony to enjoy the laws of England as well as those of their own
Province, and closed with a protest against the unlawful appropriation by the
Proprietary to his own use of the twelve pence export duty on tobacco imposed
under the Act of 1704. These resolves further declared that "the Committee
of Aggrievances of the Lower House should have likewise the Character of
a Committee for Courts of Justice" to observe the character of the commissions
to the Judges of the courts of the Province, to see that no changes were made
in the form of their oaths of office which might lessen their obligation to
hear and determine all cases according to the laws of both England and this
Province, and to observe that the oath should continue to include a clause re-
quiring all judges " to do equal Law and Right to all the King's Subjects, Rich
and Poor; and not to delay any Person of common Right, for the Letters of
the King, the Lord Proprietary, or of any other, or for any other Cause" (pp.
16-18). The form of oath for judges had been provided by law in 1732 (Arch.
Md. XXVII, 518-520).

One of these resolves declared with vehemence that Maryland must in no
sense be considered as a conquered country, since a great part of the land was at
first taken up not only from the Lord Proprietary but had been purchased from
the Indians with whom on the whole the inhabitants had, with the exception
of a few outrages and skirmishes, lived in harmony, and with whom they had
enjoyed "an amicable Course of Trade"; and that Maryland was "a colony of