Introduction.             xix

    Attorney of this Court”, whereupon Thomas Notley, who was present, being
    given the necessary authority by Gunby, the matter was put through in good
    technical legal fashion (pp. 423-424).

                         CONTEMPT.

     Failure to show sufficient respect for those in authority or to carry out their
    orders, resulted in the offender being brought before the court by a writ of
    contempt. Thus Daniel Johnson upon the complaint of Henry Adams, High
    Sheriff of Charles County, was summoned before the April, 1666, court by a
    “speciall warrt for an contempt to the governmt” issued by the Governor
    “shewne in takeing away his horse after the sherriffe had prest it for the
    publicques use and Service” and was fined 500 pounds of tobacco (p. 79).
    This was doubtless a military requisition made by the sheriff. At the October,
    1666, court four prominent planters, Joseph Harrison, James Lindsey, John
    Lewger, and Thomas Allanson, gave security to appear before the next Pro-
    vincial Court “to answer the Contempt made by them agt the Leiutennt Generalls
    power given and granted to Capt william Boreman As Commandr of the foott
    Company”, doubtless for the violation of muster regulations (p. 128).
     There are four instances in which public officials were assaulted while in the
    performance of their public duties, in which this contempt for authority made
    a mere breach of the peace a much more serious matter. Three of these were
    assaults upon sheriffs and one upon a county justice. They are all described in
    some detail elsewhere in this introduction in discussing the criminal cases which
    came before the Provincial Court. We find two assaults, by different individuals,
    upon Richard Coilett, High Sheriff of Charles County, who may have died
    of the injuries he received in the second assault (pp. xxxii-xxxiii, 198, 199, 244,
    312, 607). The assault upon Richard Tilghman, High Sheriff of Talbot County,
    in which he received humiliating treatment, was not without humorous features
    (pp. xxxiii-xxxiv, 453). In the case of the assault upon Thomas Besson, one of
    the justices of Anne Arundel County, not only the justice but a constable, were
    attacked (pp. xxxiv, 309-310).
     Reflections upon the honor or dignity of the justices of the provincial, or
    county courts, or upon the attorneys practicing before them, were punishable
    by the bench, and traducers were also liable to suits for defamation. Thus
    Thomas Sprigg of Resurrection Manor, Calvert County, and a justice of that
    county, who was represented by William Calvert as his attorney, at the April,
    1666, Provincial Court sued Raymond Staplefort, a merchant of Calvert, for
    scandal and defamation in having openly in the Calvert County Court falsely,
    scandalously, and maliciously charged Sprigg with being confederate with a
    litigant, John Bailey, in a suit between Staple fort and Bailey, that was being
    heard before that court of which Sprigg was then a justice. Sprigg recited
    his honorable record, without suspicion of bribery or perjury, both as a justice
    and as a former sheriff of Caivert. He declared that he had been put to an
    expense of £500 to clear his good name, and now brought suit against the
    defamer to vindicate himself. Stapiefort's attorney, John Morecroft, de-
    murred in law, on the ground “that whosoever informeth on behalf of the