Introduction. xxi

this, Edmund Key left the Province on a visit to England, and a writ of election
was ordered by the house to fill his place (p. 228). By a unanimous vote
on November 27 the house summoned Thomas Jenings Jr., a clerk of one
of the committees, who was later to become one of the leading lawyers of
Maryland and Attorney-General, to appear at the bar of the house "to give
Information as to a Fact, which is a Breach of Privilege of this House", and
it was ordered by a vote of 27 to 14, most of the members of the Proprietary
party voting in the negative, "that the Doors of this House be shut". Jonas
Green, the printer of the Maryland Gazette was at the same time summoned
at the bar of the house (p. 75). So tightly shut were the doors of the house
that we remain in ignorance of what the "breach of privilege" had been, or
who was suspected.

Under the £40,000 Supply act of 1756 for His Majesty's Service, a con-
siderable sum had been set aside for scalp bounties, at £50 per scalp of hostile
Indians, of which only a small part had been used (Arch. Md. LV, xliv-xlv).
Several unsuccessful attempts had previously been made to have the Assembly
divert this unexpended fund to other purposes. On December 20, 1758, a
petition was read in the Upper House from Lieutenant-Colonel John Dag-
worthy, Captain Alexander, and Joseph Beale, officers with the Maryland
soldiers on the frontier, praying that pay in arrears be given them to save
them from jail or perishing from want of the common necessities of life
(p. 59). Referred the following day for the consideration of the Lower House,
a motion was there made, backed by the vote of the Proprietary party, that
the unexpended appropriation for scalps be used to pay the soldiers on the
frontier, but this was voted down 21 to 15. The Lower House then entered
on its journal, by a vote of 24 to 12, that the Supply or Assessment bill just
rejected by the Upper House, had made provision for the pay of the petitioners,
and that in passing this bill it had done for them and others everything incum-
bent upon it (pp. 116, 117-118). Immediately thereafter, however, the same
house, by a vote of 19 to 15, did pass a motion that £1,500 of the scalp
money be applied as "presents" to the officers and soldiers raised in this Prov-
ince, for their valour and bravery in this last campaign under General Forbes
(pp. 120-121). A bill to this effect was passed on December 22 by a vote
of 19 to 18, the die-hards of the Popular party voting against even a "present"
(p. 124). It was promptly approved by the Upper House (p. 63). Under its
provisions Lieutenant-Colonel Dagworthy was to receive £30, every captain
£16, and the remainder to be expended for clothes and other necessities to be
equally distributed among the privates who had served with the Forbes ex-
pedition (pp. 136-137). In the same act was a provision reimbursing Colonel
Dagworthy and James Riley for £50 they had paid to a Cherokee Indian for
the scalp of Captain Charles, a hostile Delaware Indian, killed by Captain Evan
Shelby in a skirmish at Loyal Banning, November 12, 1757. It appears that
at the request of General Forbes this scalp had been presented to the Cherokees
in order to attach them to the English interest, and Dagworthy, ignorant of
its history, had purchased it from a Cherokee as the scalp of an Indian enemy,
and that a scalp bounty had been paid upon it on December 10^th in Annapolis