Introduction.            xvii

     purchase of liquor. He seems to have retrieved his fortunes later, as he not
     only represented Charles County in the Lower House of Assembly in 1669, but
     was clerk of the Upper House from 1674 to 1676 and Deputy Commissary of
     the Prerogative Court. He died in 1706, when his estate was administered
     upon by his son, Samuel Boughton. In addition to his landholdings in Charles
     County, where he lived, he owned two large tracts of land in Baltimore County.
     One wonders whether he may not be the same Richard Boughton, who, described
     as the son of Thomas Boughton, armiger [one entitled to bear heraldic arms],
     of Bilton, county Warwick, was admitted as a student of law to Gray's Inn,
     London, February, 1647/8. (Foster's Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn,
     Vol. 2, part I, p. 247).
       The next clerk of Charles County of which we have a record was Henry
     Bonner. A deposition shows that he was twenty-two years old about the time
     that he became clerk in 1669 (p. 540). He had apparently only very recently
     arrived in the Province. Bonner, like Boughton, had a checkered career as
     clerk. He had apparently taken over the office of clerk, or was acting as deputy
     clerk, about the time Boughton got into difficulties in the summer of 1669,
     because, when in June, 1670, he was sued by John Hatch for debt, he sought to
     evade suit by asking for a “writ of privilege”, declaring that Hatch was “not
     proceeding according to law & privileges allowed the Clearke of the Court”,
     and was granted a “nonsuite” (pp. 258-259). No record of his formal appoint-
     ment to the clerkship by the Governor, however, has been found before Sep-
     tember 16, 1670, when he was recommissioned (Arch. Md. V; 75). About a
     year later he no longer held that office, as he is referred to as “late clerk”, when
     at the November, 1671, county court, the grand jury investigated charges made
     to the Governor against him by John Helme for “mischarging certain Fees.”
     The Grand Jury found that his account was “erroneous”, but did not find it
     “presentable” (p. 356). The record does not show whether or not he resumed
     office, but it is unlikely that he did, as on August 1, 1672, Philip Gibbon was
     appointed clerk. At the November, 1674, court, immediately after the death
     of Philip Gibbon, who had succeeded him as clerk, “it was ordered that Mr
     Henry Bonner shall be Clerke to the Comissionrs below for drawing of warrants
     & hues & Cryes & mitirnus's or any such like husinesse” (p. 590). This looks
     more like an appointment for special duties than as a formal reappointment
     to the full county clerkship. His subsequent career has not been traced. In
     1670 Bonner married Elizabeth, the widow of Walter Story, a London mer-
     chant, who had settled in Charles County. They became involved in various
     law suits in connection with their own affairs and the Story estate, and were
     both apparently in prison for debt in 1672 (Arch. Md. II, 459-460; LI, passim).
     Bonner appears to have lived in the upper part of Charles County, which later
     became Prince George's, as his will, dated and probated in October, 1702, refers
     to him as of Prince George's, and vests his entire estate, including large land
     holdings on Bush River, Baltimore County, in his wife, Elizabeth.
       A somewhat nebulous figure is Philip Gibbon who succeeded Bonner and
     was formally commissioned “Clerke and keeper of the Records and proceed-
     ings” of the Charles County Court, August 1, 1672 (Arch. Md. LI, 83). It
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