xviii                Introduction.

       seems likely that Gibbon had acted as clerk since his predecessor had gotten
       into difficulties about a year before Gibbon's formal appointment in 1672.
       Nowhere, however, in the court records do we find him designating himself
       as clerk or signing himself as such. He appears as a witness to sundry legal
       papers during the years 1671-1674. The testamentary records show that
       Gibbon died intestate and that his estate was administered upon November 6,
       1674, by Benjamin Rozer. As told in the preceding paragraph, it was at the
       November 10, 1674, session, that Henry Bonner received the curiously phrased
       appointment as clerk to the justices “for drawing warrants & hues & Cryes &
       Mittimus's or any such like businesse”, which undoubtedly meant that he was
       made acting clerk, with limited authority and functions, immediately following
       Gibbon's death. Gibbon seems to have been a more efficient clerk than Boughton
       or Bonner. There are fewer obvious omissions in his entries in the court pro-
       ceedings. There seems to be no reason to believe that he was in Maryland
       before his appearance in Charles County early in 1671. It seems probable that
       lie had recently come over from England with the promise of office, an office

       he was destined to hold for less than three years before his death in the
       autumn of 1674. He purchased in September, 1673, two small plantations of
       150 acres on Portobacco Creek for 6500 pounds of tobacco, which he sold six
       months later to Benjamin Rozer for 5600 pounds (pp. 540-4). He doubtless
       lived in the town of Port Tobacco.

                           THE SHERIFF

         The sheriff, or high sheriff as he is occasionally called to distinguish him
       from an under sheriff or deputy, was an important county official. During
       the period covered by this volume the sheriff of each county was chosen
       annually by the Governor from three names nominated to him by the justices
       of the several county courts. The sheriff received no salary but was paid by
       fees, and the office was quite a profitable one. The duties and powers of the
       sheriff have been fully discussed by the editor in a previous volume of the
       Archives (LIII, xxxix-xl). The sheriff at this period was prohibited by law
       from acting as attorney in his own court. One of the justices, Henry Adams,
       who had been appointed sheriff April 20, 1665, and sworn in on June 13 (ibid.
       572-573), still held office when this record begins. He appointed Samuel Cres-
       sey, the attorney, his under sheriff or deputy sheriff. He was succeeded as sheriff
       by another justice, Thomas Mathews, who was sworn in at the June, 1666,
       court, and appointed Thomas Allanson his under sheriff (pp. 2 1-22). A sheriff
       could not sit as a justice. Benjamin Rozer received his appointment as sheriff
       April 15, 1667 (Arch. Md. V; 4) and was reappointed April 1, 1668 (ibid.
       27). These court records show that he continued to act as sheriff during the
       years 1669, 1670, 1671, and early in the year 1672, although no actual record of
       his annual appointment after 1668 can be found. Jonathan Marler and Samuel
       Cressey appear as under sheriffs in writs dated 1668 in the Rozer period (pp.
       105, 139). It may be added that Rozer, who was followed by John Allen in
       1672, was reappointed sheriff September 8, 1674, serving in that office until
       several years afterwards (Arch. Md. LI; 131, 204). Allen, recently a London