Introduction.             xxv

     pounds (p. 396). In another case a servant girl, Marie Ellis, at the September,
     1667, court, brought suit for 500 pounds of tobacco against Alexander Smyth
     and his maid servant, Elizabeth Taylor. Smyth accused Marie, who at the
     time was his servant, but when the suit was filed in the service of another, with
     having stolen a coife. Smyth sent Elizabeth Taylor to recover the coife. To
     clear her name Marie allowed Elizabeth to search among her linen but the
     coife was not to be found, whereupon Elizabeth then “did beate and abuse her
     verie much and did throw the said Marie over a tree several times calling her
     Hore to make use and lie with men”, and “struck her with her fist”, and finally
     went off with Marie's holland apron. The plaintiff declared that she was so
     disabled as to be unable to serve Mr. Philpott to whom she had hired herself,
     and that the cure of a “verie sore Legge” had been much hindered by the
     assault. The jury awarded Marie 50 pounds of tobacco as damages, and costs
     and found Alexander Smyth an accessory because he had not returned the
     apron to Marie (pp. 100-103). One of the witnesses in the case said that he
     had seen the assault when he was working at “goodie Michels”; this is doubt-
     less Joan Mitchell (Michael), widow of Thomas Mitchell, about whom in-
     sinuations of witchcraft had been made a few years before (Arch. Md.
     LIII, lv).
       One of the few cases in this period in which there is recorded a sentence for
     committing a misdemeanor was that of William Taylor, doubtless a servant,
     who was ordered to have ten “slaches” upon his bare back for stealing a pair of
     stockings, “but by his submission to the court the worshipfull Corhmissioners
     was pleased to remit the punishment” (p. 565).

                        SEX RELATIONS

       The most curious of all the “to-keep-the-peace” cases was that in which a
     man, possibly a too importunate suitor, was ordered by the court to keep away
     from a girl. At the August, 1667, court, Joseph Peters “was cleared and freed
     by Proclamation.” The case had come up upon the complaint of a planter
     William Per foite. The court ordered that Peters remain in the hands of the
     sheriff until he gave his own bond that “he comes not into the company of
     Anna Bramstone any more & that if they happen to meet he avoid her Com-
     pany & tht he should not beate William Perfaite nor come upon his plantacon”
     (p. 261). The June, 1666, county court, acting under orders of the Provincial
     Court, proclaimed a certain Mary Marler an outlaw (p. 12). No other refer-
     ence to her is to be found in these records. The case of Mary Marler of Porto-
     bacco, a spinster, found guilty of infanticide in the Provincial Court at the
     April, 1666, session, has already been treated in full in the introduction to a
     previous volume of the Archives (LVII, xxx). When the sheriff went to
     bring the prisoner, who had been found guilty, into court for sentence, he
     found that she “Had broke prison and fled for it, Whereupon Proclamacon
     made three times that if she came not in, to be Outlawed.” None of the records
     disclose whether she was caught or, if so, what was her fate.
       As usual a number of bastardy cases and cases of a man and woman accused
     of unlawful cohabitation came before the court during this period. There are