xxii                 Introduction.

        and not the county court had jurisdiction. If the defendant refused, or was
        unable to make payment as ordered by the court, he was imprisoned by the
        sheriff until a settlement satisfactory to the creditor was made.
          Many suits were thrown out by the court, a nonsuit being granted, with
        costs charged against the plaintiff. These costs included allowances to witnesses,
        fees to the attorney of the defendant who was the successful litigant, and jury
        expenses if there was a jury. Quite a number of suits were thrown out because
        they had not been entered within the two year time limit fixed under the act
        of 1666, for “the limitation of certain actions for avoiding suits at law” (Arch.
        Md. II; 201-202). The majority of the suits for debt were tried before the
        court, but in a considerable number the cases were tried before a jury. Refer-
        ence to a petit jury might be made at the request of either the plaintiff,
        or the defendant, or by the court itself on its own initiative. Twenty-six jury
        trials are recorded in this volume.
          There are recorded a few suits for damages for assault and battery and also
        for slander. References to some of the more interesting of these will be found
        elsewhere in this Introduction (p. xxiv-xxv). The index will serve as a key to
        various other types of civil actions which came before the court, but are not of
        sufficient interest to the general reader to be discussed here. Among them
        are a number of suits for wages in dispute. Disputes about land, especially land
        boundaries, were rather frequent. These will also be found discussed in another
        section of this Introduction (pp. xxxix-xlii). Suits for damages for killing or
        stealing hogs, cattle, or horses, are also discussed in a later section (pp. xxiii-
        xxv). These suits, especially those for the killing of ear-marked hogs running at
        large, had both civil and criminal aspects. Damages were payable to the owner,
        a fine to the Lord Proprietary, and a reward to the informer. It is of interest
        that down to the September, 1667, session of the court, suits for debt were
        for the amount of the debt alone and costs of suit, but beginning with this
        session and thereafter, damages in addition to the amount of the debt and costs,
        were nearly always asked, but rarely, if ever, granted by the court.

                      CRIMINAL JURISDICTIONS

          The criminal jurisdiction of the county court was largely confined to breaches
        of the peace, and misdemeanors which did not involve loss of life or member as
        punishment, the more serious felonies going directly to the Provincial Court.
        The criminal entries for the period covered by this volume are so few and so
        defective, that one wonders whether there may not have been a separate record
        book kept for them which has in course of time been lost; but it seems more
        likely that this was due to carelessness on the part of the changing personnel in
        the clerk's office. Or perhaps it was due to the fact that fees were not paid to
        the clerk for entering the records of criminal cases in the court minutes, as was
        the case in civil suits. At only one court session are we specifically told that no
        criminal cases came before the court. At the March, 1667, court session there
        is an entry that the grand jury gave its “verdict That they found noe person
        worthy of Presentmt for anie mindemeanrs agt the lawes of this Prov” (p. 62).