Introduction.             xli

    delayed the actual taking out of their patents to escape these charges. To pre-
    vent this loss of revenue the Proprietary had at various times issued proclama-
    tions ordering that those who failed to take out patents do so at once. At
    the October, 1666, session, and again two years later, sheriffs were ordered to
    make returns as to the issuance of these proclamations (pp. 120, 304-305).
      At the June, 1667, court, Ann, the widow of John Marcomb of Somerset
    County, presented a petition to the court to the effect that prior to her hus-
    band's death there had been issued to him a certificate of survey for four hun-
    dred acres of land, under the name of Marcomb's Lott, but as he had died
    before the patent had been issued, the land had escheated to the Proprietary;
    and as her husband's debts were so large “his Estate will not Extend to the
    satisfaccon of his ingagemts whereby your peticoner is left a very poore widd",
    she implored the court to issue a patent to her, and concluded her plea with two
    lines of verse:
               Prosperity & peace may alwais him attend
               That to the widdow prove himselfe a freind
    Her prayer was favorably answered (p. 207).
      The court showed great leniency to an offender in the case of a patent which
    had been “surreptitiously” obtained for 200 acres of land on St. Leonard's
    Creek, St. Mary's County. At the June, 1669, court it was revealed that
    Edward Good of Calvert County included this tract, which really belonged to
    another, in a patent for a larger tract that he had recently taken out. When
    John Hollis proved to the court that he had previously been given a patent for
    part of this same land, the court ordered that Hollis should continue to hold the
    land within the lines as given him in his original patent, but that Good might
    have what land, if any, lay within the bounds of his patent, outside the limits of
    the Hollis lands (p. 452).
      Six years after the death of John Hatton, a bachelor of Anne Arundel
    County, alledged to have died without heirs, Henry Stockett of Anne Arundel
    County petitioned the court at its December, 1668, session that certain lands
    owned by Hatton be declared escheated to the Proprietary and that a patent
    for them be issued to him. These lands, all of which lay in what was then
    Baltimore County, were Hermar's Mount, 350 acres, Sprye's Hill, 600 acres,
    both on the Sassafras River, and a tract of 400 acres on Rumley Creek. The
    sheriffe of Baltimore and Annc Arundel counties were ordered by the court to

    enquire whether there were any relations of the deceased, and if he had no
    relations, to enquire why the old patents should not be vacated (pp. 392-394).
    Thomas Stockett, the sheriff of Anne Arundel County and a brother of the
    petitioner, reported at the February, 1668/9, session that he could find no per-
    son to appear for Hatton, but the court did not deem this return sufficient, and
    ordered a fuller enquiry (p. 423). At the June, 1669, session the sheriffs of
    both Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties made reports that no heirs could
    be found (p. 458). A deed, recorded sometime later in the Baltimore County
    Court records, showed, however, that Hatton had brothers living in England
    who claimed and obtained legal possession of those lands and afterwards dis-
    posed of them.