xxxii Introduction.

Proprietary as his prerogative, or because the appropriations which they carried
were to come from the disputed ordinary licenses or from some other source
of revenue, such as fines and forfeitures, claimed by the Proprietary as his
own, or because they sought to extend the jurisdiction of the county courts at
the expense of the provincial courts at Annapolis.

The story of the attempt at this session to establish a college at Annapolis,
and the proposal to use for this purpose the unfinished and long-abandoned
building, known as "Bladen's Folly", begun by Governor Bladen as a residence
for the Proprietary governors, has already been told in part by the editor in
a former volume of the Archives (LVI; ixvi-lxviii). This project was revived
at the 1763 session and met its nemesis in the Upper House, because it was
proposed to use the ordinary licenses towards the support of the college. In
another section of this introduction this final and unsuccessful attempt before
the Revolution to establish a "Seminary of Learning" in Maryland, will be
discussed in greater detail (pp. Iv-lviii). Following the establishment of peace
between Great Britain and France in 1762, the Indians, as the result of the
uprising under Pontiac, again began to make depredations along the entire
western frontier. A bill to provide a force of fifty rangers aroused an acri-
monious dispute between the two houses, because the Lower House sought
to use licenses from ordinaries for this purpose. Both houses showed a perfect
willingness to leave the settlers on the frontier to their fate rather than agree
upon any compromise which would have made an appropriation possible for
the support of the rangers, and no legislation whatever for this purpose was
passed. The disposition of licenses from ordinaries, or public houses, had been
the cause of a dispute extending back nearly three-quarters of a century, and
one which had gained heat with the passage of the years. It reached its climax
at the 1763 session when it colored much of the proposed legislation of im-
portance that came before the Assembly. As an Assembly problem, however,
it did not reappear again after this session, although it was not until 1766 that
the Proprietary was finally forced on legal grounds to relinquish his claims
to these licenses. The history of this ordinary license question, which had its
beginnings in 1692, is dealt with in detail elsewhere in this introduction
(pp. ixvii-lxix).

Numerous questions involving parishes and churches, such as the division
of parishes, the erection, replacement, or repair, of churches or chapels of
ease, and the employment of organists, came before the 1763 Assembly, usually
as the result of petitions presented by vestries or congregations. These
parochial and church matters, are discussed elsewhere (pp. li-liv). Towns
and counties asked legislation for their benefit. Thus Baltimore sought
authority to confirm a lease made by Thomas Harrison to the commissioners
of Baltimore Town for a lot to be used as the site of a town market. The
Lower House passed the bill, but after it was amended in the Upper House
so as to change the method of appointment of certain market employees and
to add a clause "to save to the King and to the Lord Proprietary their respec-
tive rights", it was rejected by the lower chamber, doubtless because it implied
the recognition of some Proprietary "pretension" which this body opposed