Introduction. xv

of St. Mary's; the two Mackalls from Calvert; and Thomas Johnson, Jr. of
Anne Arundel County, later to be an active supporter of the Revolutionary
movement and the first Revolutionary governor of Maryland. Simon Wilmer,
a new member from Kent, did not take his seat until towards the close of the
1762 session, when he voted consistently with the Proprietary party. Edward
Gantt of Calvert and Daniel Sullivan of Dorchester are to be found first on
one side and then on the other of the political fence.

While it might be expected that the anti-Proprietary leaders of this period
would later be prominent as popular partisans in the events leading up to the
Revolution, and that the Proprietary leaders would then exhibit strong Loyalist
tendencies, this was true only to a limited extent. Thus Johnson, Plater, Golds-
borough, and Smallwood, who affiliated with the Proprietary party at this
time, were in the next decade active in the Revolutionary movement, while
James Tilghman, active among the anti-Proprietary group, was later a Loyalist
in his sympathies.

The membership of the Lower House consisted of fifty-eight delegates, four
from each of the fourteen counties and two from the city of Annapolis. There
was never a full attendance in the Lower House, the average voting attendance
being in the lower forties, and at no time does the record vote show more than
fifty-three present and voting (pp. 112, 113). Sharpe declared in a letter to
Cecilius Calvert, that had there been a full attendance of delegates, the Assess-
ment or Supply bill would not have passed the Lower House (Arch. Md.
XXV; 52). The Proprietary party delegates who had not served in the pre-
ceding Assembly were Corbin Lee of Baltimore County, a large landholder,
descended from the distinguished Lee family of Virginia; William Allen and
Peter Chaille of Worcester; Joseph Cox Gray of Dorchester; William Hay ward,
John Adams, and William Adams of Somerset; James Hollyday and Thomas
Wright of Queen Anne's; and Simon Wilmer of Kent. The new delegates in the
Lower House who affiliated with the popular or country party, were: Mordecai
Jacobs and Francis Waring of Prince George's; James Tilghman of Talbot;
Richard Lloyd of Kent; William Ward of Cecil; and Thomas Beatty of
Frederick.

Analysis of the election returns shows that St. Mary's, Calvert, Worcester,
Somerset, each with four delegates, and the City of Annapolis with two dele-
gates sent solid delegations affiliated with the Proprietary party. Of the four
delegates from Dorchester, three, Joseph Cox Gray, Charles Goldsborough, and
usually Daniel Sullivan, voted with the Proprietary group, and Henry Hooper
of that county, the Speaker, was doubtless in full sympathy with his colleagues,
although there was no division in the house necessitating a deciding vote from
him which openly disclosed his affiliation.

Governor Sharpe, writing to Cecilius Calvert, the Proprietary's Secretary
in London, soon after the March-April, 1762, session had adjourned, called
the latter's attention to the closeness of the party vote on the Assessment or
Supply bill, and declared that "the People are so much divided about it that
by the same County are returned some Members who adhere to it & others
who strenuously oppose it, while some Counties have in a manner instructed