xx             Introduction.
                         ATTORNEYS


          The court records were kept in such a way that it is often not possible to
        know whether litigants were represented by attorneys at law or by mere
        attorneys in fact. Both, especially in the earlier years, appeared before the
        court. Attorneys in fact can usually be recognized by a letter of attorney
        (power of attorney) filed in court, authorizing some person to appear in court
        and act for another in a given cause, or to execute a deed, or to perform some
        other specified legal function. Following the restoration of the Province to
        the Calverts in 1658 the legal work conducted before the court passed more
        and more into the hands of professional lawyers. By this it is not meant that
        the attorneys at law practicing in the Provincial and county courts devoted
        themselves exclusively to its practice, for nearly all of them were planters as
        well. During the period covered by this record, the great bulk of the business
        before the Charles County courts came to be carried on by a comparatively
        small group of local attorneys at law.
          The attorneys at law who most frequently appear in Charles County at this
        time are Benjamin Rozer, Samuel Cressey, and John Jones. Rozer, Cressey,
        and Jones first appeared as attorneys in the years 1662-1663. Cressey died in
        1675. Jones was in active practice when this record closes. Rozer, when sheriff,
        did not practice. Richard Boughton and Henry Bonner, both of whom had
        held the office of clerk of the court, after their retirement as clerks, frequently
        represented clients before the court. The act of 1666 prohibited county justices,
        clerks, and sheriffs from practicing as attorneys before their own court (Arch.
        Md. II; 132). Just before the close of the 1666-1674 period we find a few
        formal entries in the court minutes of men sworn in as attorneys. Thus at the
        September, 1674 court, Mr. Henry Bonner and Mr. John Jones were “sworne
        as Attorney of this Court by the Worshipfull the Comissionrs of the sd Court”
        (p. 586). This formal action was the result of the recent passage of a law
        with the amusing title, “an act to reform the attorneys, councellors and
        solicitors at law of this Province”, passed at the May-June, 1674, General
        Assembly, restricting practice by attorneys before the county courts to those
        sworn in respectively by each county court (Arch. Md. II; 409-411).
          That the court believed that lawyers stirred up trouble between servants and
        their masters is indicated by an order of the Charles County Court at the March,
        1673, session, prohibiting any attorney from appearing for a servant against
        a master without having first obtained the approval of the court (p. 496). The
        act of 1674, which fixed 200 pounds of tobacco as the maximum fee that might
        be charged by an attorney in a case, had the result which might have been
        expected. Prior to its passage, when costs of suit were assessed against the
        losing litigant, a fee of 6o pounds of tobacco was invariably allowed by the
        court to the lawyer of the successful litigant as one of the “costs”. But im-
        mediately after the passage of the 1674 act invariably the maximum fee per-
        mitted under the act, 200 pounds of tobacco, was allowed in the bill of costs
        as the fee to be paid by the loser to the attorney of the successful litigant. Be-
        ginning with the September, 1674, session, the new ceiling figure of 200 pounds
        appears on the record. But it is not disclosed whether the unsuccessful litigant