Introduction. Iv

A Lower House bill providing for the establishment of a county school in
Frederick, the fourteenth county to be erected, and requiring among other
things that the public treasurers (of the Western and Eastern shores) render
accounts of the funds in their possession to the visitors of the several county
schools, was passed on November 23, 1763, and sent to the Upper House, which
amended it by striking out the latter provision. The Lower House accepted
the amendment and it became a law (pp. 391.392, 269). This act [No. XXXII~]
appointed seven men who were named in it to serve as visitors of a "public
school" in Frederick County and to purchase one acre of land in Frederick
Town for that purpose, the funds for its support to come from Frederick's
one-fourteenth share of the money collected and divided equally among the
fourteen counties for the use of the county free schools of the Province.
Although Frederick County had been established in 1748 the preamble to the
act indicates that as yet there was no county school there. This preamble recites
that "it is reasonable that Education should be extended equally to the several
Parts of the Province, and that there should be a Public School erected in
Frederick County, as well as in the other Counties" (pp. 431, 433).

At the 1763 session a petition had been presented to the Assembly by the
visitors of the Baltimore County free school, asking for the passage of a bill
to authorize them to dispose of the school lands and improvements. This
petition was promptly rejected by the Upper House (p. 232). At the same
session the visitors of the Talbot County free school also sought authority
to sell certain lands and a house (p. 234) which does not seem to have been
granted.

At the 1763 session an act was passed imposing, in addition to the existing
duty on negro slaves brought into the Province, a duty of £2 to be used for
the support of the county schools (pp. 512.513). The bill as it originally
passed the Lower House, imposed a duty of £10 additional per poll, but this
was reduced in the upper chamber to £2 (pp. 345, 379, 381, 384).

ESTABLISHMENT OF A COLLEGE

The establishment of a college at Annapolis, long under consideration, had
last come up at the April-May, 1761, session, and has been discussed in the
introduction to a preceding volume of the Archives (LVI; ixvi-lxviii). It will
be recalled that it was proposed to complete the building begun in 1744 as the
official residence for Governor Thomas Bladen and his successors, which had
remained unfinished for nearly twenty years, owing to a controversy that had
arisen between the Lower House and the Proprietary government, and to use
it as a college building. The Lower House at the 1761 session, after a spirited
debate and several votes, adopted a "proposal" which in addition to applying
funds that were to be derived from taxes on ordinaries, wheel carriages,
billiard tables, and bachelors, and from duties on wines, for the support of the
college, approved the raising of the additional funds needed for repairing and
finishing "Bladen's Folly", as the building was familiarly called, by a public
subscription and a lottery. In including licenses from ordinaries as one of