Introduction.           xlvii

    physician as well as a lawyer. We find him practicing medicine in Virginia in
    1664 before coming to Maryland (p. 26). In what seems to have been a splte
    suit and one which he lost, Morecroft, after losing an earlier suit for defama-
    tion against his former indentured servant, William Champ, who had called
    his late master a “Cheating old Knave”, sued Champ for an accounting at
    the October, 1666, court. In this latter suit Champ declared that he had been
    “imployed [by Morecroft] in the Art & mystery of Physick, as his servant by
    Indenture”. Champ, who died in the latter part of the year 1668, was then
    referred to as a “phytitian” of St. Mary's County (pp. 119, 120, 122, 126,
    130). He had probably incurred the enmity of Morecroft by marrying Fortune,
    the widow of Bulmar Mitford, who had been a patient of Morecroft. Fortune,
    however, promptly consoled herself by marrying a very short time after Champ's
    death, a third husband Marmaduke Semmes (p. 358). Nearly four years later
    at the March, 1669/70, court Morecroft reported a remarkable agreement with
    an indentured servant, James Ricards. Ricards, an indentured servant of
    Thomas Dent, with two years and ten months to serve, agreed to an exchange
    of servants between Dent and Morecroft, the latter giving the former a man-
    servant with five years to serve and Richards agreeing to an extension of his
    time to five years under his new master Morecroft, if the latter “doe and shall
    make a firme and absolute cure of the leg of the said James Ricards”—but
    if there is no cure Ricards was to serve only the two years and ten months
    (p. 492). The sequel is not revealed.
      At the April, 1667, court, a sufferer from an “old ulcher in his legg”, a boy
    named Joseph Edloe, asked the court that a guardian be appointed for him and
    was ordered by the court to live with Mr. Thomas Powell of Talbot County
    until he was twenty-one years of age, and that “Powell doe some speedy remedy
    for the Cureing” of the ulcer (p. 182). Powell was a prominent Quaker of
    Talbot. The result is not disclosed.
      John Corbett, an indentured servant, at this same court complained that “he
    is in a languishing condicon of Body, and Cann have noe remedy from his Mastr
    Joseph Tilly for the Cure of his distemper that hangs upon hime”. The court
    ordered that Dr. John Stansby pay Tilly 250 pounds of tobacco for the un-
    expired term of Corbett's servitude and take him into cure, Corbett either to
    pay Stansby 2000 pounds of tobacco for the cure or serve him for two years
    after the expiration of the service due to Tilly (p. 182). At the December,
    1668, court Dr. Stansby, by John Morecroft his attorney, sued Peter Sharpe,
    who was represented by Daniel Jenifer, for unlawfully keeping and detaining
    John Corbett contrary to the act of Assembly. Sharpe declared that Stansby had
    not taken Corbett “into cure” of his distemper as the court had ordered, and
    as he was in a “languishing condicon” and had applied to the defendant for
    help, he had entertained him out of charity and “did give entertainmt to the sd
    Corbett and applyed meanes to his Sore towards the perfecting of a Cure”.
    The Court held that as not “any meanes Considerable” towards the cure had
    been applied, and Corbett had been forced to look out for other succour and
    relief, the judgment of the court was that as Sharpe had been ignorant of the
    order of the court, which was but a conditional one dependent upon the cure,