Introduction. xxix

ing the Proprietary's prerogative. To be sure, at this session a few acts were
passed and became laws, but these were either acts continuing the operation of
old laws, or were local or private acts unrelated to subjects of political
controversy.

In the Upper House one new name appears, that of Richard Lee of Charles
Countyi who had recently been added to the Governor's Council. He was a
member of a branch of the distinguished Lee family of Virginia that had settled
in southern Maryland early in the eighteenth century. The correspondence of
Governor Sharpe shows that both Colonel William Goldsborough and Colonel
Robert Jenckins Henry were in bad health and were unable to attend meetings,
and that Colonel Edward Lloyd of "Wye" was irregular in his attendance
(Arch. Md. IX, 326, 389). This correspondence also shows that enmity had
developed between Daniel Dulany the younger, the strongest man intellectually
on the Council, and Stephen Bordley the Attorney-General (ibid, 389), and that
Sharpe had begun to doubt Dulany's complete attachment to the Proprietary
interest (ibz'd; 479, 497-501).

The Lower House listened with resentment to the Governor's opening speech
to the two houses, which included a paragraph calling the attention of this
house to the legal opinion of Charles Pratt, the King's Attorney-General, to
the effect that the recent Supply or Assessment bills passed by that house were
unconstitutional. This opinion (pp. 202-204) is more fully discussed in a
later section of this introduction (p. li). After congratulating both houses
on the signal success of the King's arms during the past year, the Governor
urged the Assembly to comply immediately with the wishes of the King as
expressed in the letters of Pitt and Amherst which he transmitted for their
consideration, and urged that in considering the Supply bill they avoid the rock
on which the two houses had hitherto split (pp. 228-229).

George Fraser, a delegate from Prince George's County, and Captain
Arthur Lee of Charles County, although elected to the Lower House in Sep-
tember, 1758, were now sworn in and took their seats for the first time (pp.
23, 228, 229). The Speaker was directed to issue writs for elections to fill
the places of Thomas Harris of Queen Anne's County who had recently died,
and of Edmund Key of Saint Mary's County "removed from the Province"
to England. The Rev. Alexander Williamson who had lately been appointed
rector of St. Anne's Parish was desired to read prayers twice daily in the
Lower House. The rules used at previous sessions were adopted and six
standing committees appointed (pp. 228-229).

The letter from William Pitt, a circular communication sent to various
colonial governors, dated at Whitehall, January 7th, 1760 (p. 199-200), was
similar in phrase and content to that submitted to the last Assembly (pp. 142-
144). He repeated his request that the Assembly furnish immediately as many
men as possible to cooperate with the regular British forces, and reiterated
his previous statements that officers in the Provincial service, as high as and
including colonels, would be given the same rank as those in the regular service;
he declared that the King would arm, equip, and fed the men to be raised,
and that although for the present the Province would be called upon to recruit,