Introduction.             xix

     merchant, had been in Maryland only a few years (p. 504). On November 8,
     1672, Allen appears as sheriff (p. 428), and was still in office in August, 1674,
     when the coroner returned writs in suits in which Allen was a plaintiff (p. 573).
     As of some interest in this connection, the court record reveals that the sheriff's
     imprisonment charges for the custody for five days of a prominent defendant,
     Samuel Fendall, were 100 pounds of tobacco, or 20 pounds a day; and that
     the charge for the arrest of this same person was a fee of 55 pounds (p. 437).

                         THE CORONER

      The functions of a coroner usually had been combined either with those of
     sheriff, or county clerk, or constable, until the passage of the act of April-May,
     1666. This provided for the appointment by the Governor “from time to time”
     of a suitable person in each county as coroner, to whom was to be administered
     the same form of oath as that used for coroners in England (Arch. Md. II;
     130-131). Fees for the coroner are not mentioned in this act, but in 1671 the
     coroner's fee for “viewing the bodies” of those “dead by misadventure”, was
     fixed at 250 pounds of tobacco; and in cases where the coroner acted for a
     disqualified sheriff, as in the arrest of the sheriff himself, or where the sheriff
     appeared as plaintiff in a suit, the coroner's fee was fixed at 40 pounds (Arch.
     Md. II; 292-294). There is only one mention of the appointment of a coroner
     for Charles County during the entire period covered by this volume, either here,
     or in the proceedings of the Governor and Council, or in the proceedings of the
     Provincial Court. This was when Thomas Thorowgood was sworn in as
     coroner on August 7, 1667 (p. 95). How long he served is not known. It is
     revealed by this record, however, from entries in which fees for the coroner
     are mentioned in the county levies, or where the coroner acted instead of the
     sheriff, that Ignatius Causine was the coroner of Charles County in the years
     1671, 1672, and 1674 (313-316, 348, 362-363, 431, 587). It seems most
     likely that Causine, who became one of the justices of the Charles County court
     in 1672, served as coroner during all the later period covered by this volume.

                         CONSTABLES

      Constables for the several county hundreds were appointed by the county
     courts. On account of the carelessness or indifference of the court clerks, nota-
     tions of the actual appointment by the court of constables are almost entirely
     lacking in the Charles County records of this period. The one such appoint-
     ment recorded is that on March 10, 1670/1, when Henry Hawkins, constable
     for Portobacco Hundred was sworn in (p. 317). The court on several occa-
     sions fined constables for their failure to be present at court sessions as was
     required by law. We have the record of fines imposed, or remitted, in 1668,
     1671, and 1674, upon the following constables: Thomas Hussey, Owen Jones,
     John Newton, William Barton, Jr., Gilbert Corner, Francis Thornton, William
     Boyden, Alexander White (p. 144); Joseph Cooper, John Dobs, and William
     Russell (pp. 356, 529, 590). The fine imposed for non-attendance of a
     constable at a court session was 1000 pounds of tobacco.