x Letter of Transmittal.

upon his pocketbook. Governor Horatio Sharpe, who was an excellent ad-
ministrator and personally popular, was of course obliged to act according to
the definite instructions of his master, instructions which were most specific,
and usually transmitted to him through Cecilius Calvert, Secretary of the
Proprietary in London, who was in part responsible for the shortsighted atti-
tude of his nephew the Lord Proprietary, Frederick, Sixth Lord Baltimore.
It was the growing hostility of the people to this absentee landlord and mer-
cenary overlord, combined with the passage of the Stamp Act, that did much
to prepare the way for the Revolution.

The larger background upon which happenings in Maryland at this period
were projected, embraced the events of the last two years of the Seven Years
War and the conclusion of the peace between Great Britain and France. The
treaty of Paris was signed on February 15, 1763, but news of this did not
officially reach Maryland until some five months later, when on July 26, peace
was proclaimed by Governor Sharpe and a day of public thanksgiving appointed.
But as a matter of fact with the capture of Quebec by Wolf e in 1759 the war
in America had virtually come to an end, and relieved of the fear of actual
invasion, the Maryland Assembly had on various pretexts refused to make any
provision for defense. Immediately following the conclusion of the peace, the
northern Indians under the leadership of Pontiac, made a final attempt to throw
off the yoke of the whites, and war parties harassed the English settlements,
their depredations extending southward along the frontiers of the central col-
onies. Again the western settlements of Maryland were in a state of alarm,
although these Indian attacks proved to be shortlived and the actual damage
done was small. It is to the disgrace of both political factions in Maryland,
that when the threat to the frontier seemed serious, neither, as this record
shows, would even temporarily bury their political differences and make pro-
vision for a defense of the settlements.

In Maryland affairs this 1762.1763 period marks the end of the bitter five
year struggle between the Upper and Lower houses over the passage of a Supply
bill for His Majesty's Service, or the Assessment bill, as it was generally
called. This bill, which with various unessential changes, such as the amounts
appropriated and the rates of taxation, beginning with the September-December,
1757, session, had been passed by the Lower House at eight successive sessions,
to be as often rejected in the upper chamber. It was now again passed for the
ninth time at the March-April, 1762, session, the first meeting of the new
Assembly that had been elected in 1761. But after its ninth rejection in the
upper chamber it was never again to be brought forward by the popular or
country party in the Lower House. This abandonment of the Supply bill was
in part due to the fact that the ending of the war had lessened the immediate