Introduction.            xvii

    misdemeanors (Arch. Md. V; 66). Blomfield opened a new court record hook,
    Liber JJ, almost immediately after he became clerk. It may be added that
    although he was discharged from office for various “misdemeanors” on July 21,
    1670, he was again four years later appointed clerk, on March 9, 1673/4
    (Arch. Md. V; 124). It is uncertain who acted as clerk between July 21, 1670,
    when Blomfield was dismissed, and Nov 8, 1670, when Thomas Cakewood
    (Cabewood) was appointed (Arch. Md. V; 76-77). There were no court
    sessions held, and but few papers recorded, in this period. Possibly Richard
    Moy, who reported that Blomfield was planning to flee the Province, and to
    whom the keys of the Secretary's office had then been turned over, acted as
    clerk in this interval (Arch. Md. V; 76-77). Cakewood, like Blomfield, got
    into trouble and was discharged from office, January 19, 1670/I, “for some
    misdemeanor by him committed” (ibid., 82). The clerk of the court might at
    this time practice in his own court. Both Jeni fer and Biomfield were sworn
    attorneys of the Provincial Court, Moy and Cakewood were not.

                        ATTORNEYS.

      The beginning of the period covered by this record saw the first development
    in Maryland of what may be called a professional bar, apparently stimulated
    by the arrival in the Province from Virginia in 1665 of a lawyer of parts,
    John Morecroft. Before this litigants in the higher court had been generally
    represented by various prominent public officials and planters with little legal
    training, usually resident near St. Mary's City, to whom practice before the court
    was a mere incident among their other activities. Morecroft was described a few
    years later in a letter by Governor Charles Calvert to his father Cecilius,
    dated April 26, 1672, as “the best lawyer in the community and has always
    been”. Practice in the provincial courts, which had heretofore been widely
    spread, now began to be concentrated in the hands of a comparatively few
    men, and beginning with the June, 1666, session, all practitioners were obliged
    to take a formal “Oath of an Attorney of the Court”, and the names of the
    attorneys representing litigants were bracketed with the latter in the case
    entry headings.
      The first to be sworn as an attorney, and therefore to be considered the Nestor
        of the professional bar of Maryland, was William Calvert, a nephew of the
        Lord Proprietary, Cecilius Calvert. He took the oath of attorney, June 12,
        1666, and afterwards on the same day John Morecroft and Daniel Jenifer
        were sworn, the latter being the then clerk of the court. Benjamin Rozer was
        admitted, October 16, 1666; Thomas Notley and Richard Boughton, the latter
        no longer a justice, were admitted, February 12th, 1666/7; John Blomfield,
        soon to be appointed clerk of the court, December 7, 1668; Thomas Canton,
        February 9, 1668/9; Thomas Knighton, February 10, 1668/9. The next
        admission, that of William Bysse of Calvert County, was not in the usual
        manner, but by special license from Governor Charles Calvert, dated May 8,
        1669, apparently granted just before he left for a visit to England, and Bysse
        was sworn in at the next court which was held on June 2 (p. 448). The suc-
        2