xxviii               Introduction.

        “one other mortall wound in the throate of the depth of three inches and
        breadth of one inch to the said william Price did give soe that the said william
        Price of the last wound had dyed if he had not dyed of the former wound”.
        The jury brought in this rather verbose verdict “That Walter Fake is Guilty
        of the death of Willm Price by wounding him in severall places of the body
        whereof hee dyed—That Walter Pake was drunk and did not know what he
        did att the time of Committing the fact aforesaid—Therefore if the Court
        are of Judgmt that it was murder, Then the Jury doe finde it murder, But
        if not then the Jury doe finde it manslaughter” . . . “The whole Bench then
        gave their Judgmt that the said walter Pake now Prisoner att the Barr is Guilty
        of Murder”. That the murderer was drunk when he committed the crime does
        not seem to have much influenced the jury, and the Court, not at all. Asked
        whether he had anything to say after the judge passed sentence, he desired that
        he might suffer death before his own house where he had committed the
        murder. The Court granted this request and ordered his execution at the
        hands of Pope Alvey, then apparently the “general hangman”. Civil suits
        against Fake, one involving a horse trade and another a suit f or debt, were
        filed at this same session at which he was being tried for murder, and were
        quashed, the court refusing to admit them until the criminal charges against
        him had been answered. It also appears that Pake's lands were forfeited to
        the Lord Proprietary and soon afterwards sold, as a confession of judgment
        entered at the April, 1670, court shows that a certain Thomas Cosden, inn-
        keeper, in February 1668/9, less than two months after Pake's execution, leased
        at New Town from Governor Charles Calvert the former plantation of Fake
        on Bretton's Bay (pp. 352, 354-6, 363-4, 380, 546).
          There are a few interesting sidelights in connection with Pake, the murderer,
        Price, the victim, and Alvey, the hangman. Pake seems to have been living in
        1666 at New Town on Bretton's Bay where his inn was doubtless located.
        His extraordinary choice of the place for his execution, in front of the house
        where he committed the crime, may have been the result of remorse. William
        Price, the murdered man, a former indentured servant, who had married his
        mistress Hannah Lee, was a most unsavory fellow who had spent much of his
        time in Maryland prisons and had been forbidden by the Court to interfere in
        his wife's affairs. His death must have been a relief to the community. Pake
        had acted as attorney for Price in the St. Mary's County Court in 1666 (p. 78).
        Much about him will be found in the records of the Charles County Court
        (Arch. Md. LIII; xliv) and in the earlier records of the Provincial Court
        (ibid., XLIX, LI). Pope Alvey, designated by the Court to hang Pake, had
        himself a few years before been sentenced to death for murder, and had only
        escaped execution by claiming benefit of clergy. When tried again soon after-
        wards and once more been sentenced to hang for repeated convictions as a
        hogstealer, he was pardoned, and then seems to have been become “general
        hangman”, an office sometimes conferred upon a felon, who after sentence of
        death was imposed, had been pardoned (Arch. Md. Li; 214). This appears to
        have been the first hanging at which he was called upon to exercise the duties of
        his office.