ixxviii Introduction.

large sumptuous folio volume, almost contemporary with this period—Thomas
Bacon's Laws of Maryland at Large, printed in 1765 at Annapolis by Jonas
Green. By act of the Assembly, Bacon's Laws was given legal status. Only the
acts that were actually in force down to the year of publication, 1765, are printed
in full, but resumes very useful to the researcher, of some of the earlier laws,
then obsolete only in part, are to be found in Bacon. In Lawrence C. Wroth's
A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland, 1922, will be found references
to the contemporary printed material available for this period, relating to
Assembly affairs.

It should be added that the Clerk in entering the several acts in the official
manuscript liber for the years 1762 and 1763, designated "Laws: Liber H.S.
No. i", has twice made the same clerical error, and for each session has assigned
the same number, i, to both the first and second acts, thus making the numbers
of all the succeeding acts incorrect. The editor, who does not wish to alter in
any way the original text, follows the Clerk and repeats the latter's incorrect
manuscript liber arabic numeration of the several acts, but has also added con-
secutively in bracketed italicized Roman numerals the corrected numeration of
the several subsequent acts, corresponding to Green's numbering as printed in his
contemporary session laws for these two years and in Bacon's Laws of Mary-
land At Large, 1765. All of the original manuscript records, the journals of
both houses, and the laws are in the State of Maryland depositary, the Hall of
Records, Annapolis.

The sources from which the material in the Appendix has been taken are
varied and will be noted under each item.

APPENDIX

In the Appendix will be found printed a number of contemporary manuscript
documents and two very rare contemporary printed items bearing on the As-
sembly proceedings for this period. (I) The £45,000 Supply bill for His
Majesty's Service, or the Assessment Bill as it was familiarly known, is here
reprinted in full from one of the two known copies of an excessively rare con-
temporary pamphlet in which, with various Assembly messages, the bill was
printed in full. This Supply bill, which was passed for the ninth time at the
1762 session by the Lower House and as often rejected in the Upper House,
is discussed elsewhere in this introduction (pp. xxxviii-xlvi, 523.571). Other
documents to be found in the Appendix, also discussed elsewhere in this intro-
duction, are: (II) a letter from Frederick, Lord Baltimore, to Governor Sharpe,
telling him that he had presented to Their Majesties the address of condolence
and congratulation of the Upper House (pp. xlviii-xlix); (III) petitions from
William and Mary Parish and All Faiths' Parish, St. Mary County, and from
Christ Church Parish, Kent County, asking for changes in parish bounds (pp.
li-liii); (IV) a list of suits instituted against debtors to the Loan Office on
mortgages secured by land (pp. ixii-lxiii); (V) instructions by Sharpe to the
Naval Officer at Patuxent to prevent grain and other supplies from reaching
the enemy; (VI) the printed broadside petition of Jonas Green, the public