Introduction.          xxxiii

     Henry Mitchell who was also charged with barratry, had an unsavory
   reputation. He figured unpleasantly in an assault and cruel whipping which
   he had administered to James Collum four years before which will be found
   described in detail in the record of the case (pp. 152, 156, 172). He had
   also more recently been suspected of hogstealing and had been before the court
   on this charge (pp. 172, 197). When brought before the court at its December,
   1669, session charged with barratry, he was presented for an offense, un-
   specified in the presentment, which seems to have culminated on October 20,
   1669. He at first asked a jury trial, but then changed his mind, and declared
   that “he is not willing to plead with his Löpp the Lord Proprietary humbly
   submitteth himself e to the judgment of the Court here”. He was thereupon
   ordered to give security for his good abearance during his life which he did
   in the amount of £50. It would appear that he again got into trouble and that
   this amount was declared forfeited, but the Court later increased the security to
   £2oo sterling and the former forfeiture was remitted (pp. 605, 6o6).
     Nine cases of assault of sufficient gravity to be brought before the Pro-
   vincial, rather than before a county court, are to be found in this record. These
   were instituted as criminal cases in the name of the Lord Proprietary against
   the assailant, but were in several instances followed by civil suits by the injured
   party for personal damages. There were four instances of assaults upon public
   officials who had been assaulted in the performance of their public duties, three
   were upon sheriffs, and one upon a county justice. Several of these assault
   cases are of sufficient human interest to be reported in some detail.
     At the June, t667, court Thomas How and his wife Phillis were tried before
   a jury and found guilty of striking Richard Collett, High Sheriff of Calvert
   County, who had served a writ of attachment upon the Hows. The Court
   ordered that “each of them have forty stripes on the bare back”—an unusually
   large number. Phillis escaped whipping because she was pregnant, the record
   showing that “Upon the intercession of some persons, the said Howes wife
   being wth Childe as to the Court informed therefore Ordered that the stripes
   be given the said Phillis bee remitted, yet notwthstanding to be tyed on the
   Contrary side of the said tree during the time her husband Tho: How doth
   receive his said 40 stripes” (pp. 198, 199). As has just been told in a preceding
   paragraph another assault upon Richard Collett several months later, in this latter
   instance by Captain Thomas Manning, also made when the sheriff was “offici-
   ating his office”, would appear to have been the cause of the latter's death and
   to have resulted in the presentment of Manning for harratry (pp. xxxii, 607).
     No less a personage that Dr. Richard Tilghman of The Hermitage, Talbot
   County, High Sheriff, was the victim of ignominious treatment at the hands
   of an irate planter and his wife. Apparently it was when Tilghman sought
   to serve a writ upon Simon Carpenter and his wife Elizabeth of Chester River,
   that he received a severe beating at their hands. The details of the assault as
   related in the indictment show that the High Sheriff got decidedly the worse of
   the fracas. He was disarmed of his cutlass, valued in the indictment at ten
   shillings, which he “did weare and had by his side”, and one of his assailants,
   doubtless, the wife Elizabeth,” the haire of the said Richard Tilghman On
       3