Introduction.            xxix

      followed. At the November, 1668, Provincial Court, Peake, the well known
      innkeeper of New Town on Bretton's Bay, who was a former justice of St.
      Mary's County and an extensive landowner, was tried for having killed William
      Price with a sword on October 23, 1668, at Peake's inn. Although it was
      shown that Peake was drunk at the time of the murder, he was found guilty
      and sentenced to be hanged. After sentence of death was passed, his request
      that he might suffer death before his own house where he committed the
      murder was granted. The murder, the trial, and spectacular execution, have
      been fully discussed by the editor in a previous volume of the Archives (LVII,
      xxvii-xxviii). There was no evidence recorded which would tend to show
      whether the suit just referred to played any part in the murder of the attorney
      by his client. The unsavory record of William Price, the victim, a former
      indentured servant who had become a landowner and practicing attorney before
      the Charles County Court, is also discussed (ibid. p. xxviii).

                    CLERGYMEN AND CHURCHES

        A few notes on the clergymen and churches mentioned in this record may
      be of interest. Since the establishment of Charles County in 1658 down through
      the year 1674, when this record closes, three Protestant ministers are known
      to have officiated in that county. These were Francis Doughtie, John Legatt,
      and Matthew Hill. Doughtie and Hill are known to have been ordained
      clergymen of the Church of England who had been evicted for non-conformity
      from English parishes. Legatt, of whom less is known, was also doubtless of
      the Church of England. Before the Protestant Revolution of 1689, there were
      no Church of England parishes established by law in Maryland, nor did the
      Roman Catholic lord proprietaries have anything to do with the appointment
      of the Anglican clergy, at this time few in number, who came into the Province.
      It will be seen in the case of the Rev. Matthew Hill, that he was “elected and
      chosen by the Protestant Inhabitants” of the locality in which he served
     (p. 262).
        Francis Doughtie had a variegated ministerial career in which, following his
      eviction in England, he officiated in Congregational churches in Massachusetts,
      in Dutch Reformed churches in New York, and in a Church of England parish
      on the Eastern Shore of Virginia; he was also in Rhode Island. After four
      years in Virginia in Hungars Parish, Accomack, he came to Charles County in
      1658, remaining here until early in 1662, when he returned to Virginia to take
      a parish on the western shore. There he became rector of Rappahannock Parish
      across the Potomac, where his Puritan leanings, personal weaknesses, and
      witch-hunting proclivities, got him into difficulties. His wife continued to live
      in Maryland, and he died in Virginia about 1684 (Wm. & Mary Coll. Quart.
      1939, 301-2). While in Maryland he had acquired on January 17, 1659/60,
      the lease on a 200 acre plantation in “the Parish of or hamlet of Pickewaxon in
      Charles County” from Giles Tompkinson, on which he and his wife Anne, after
      they had returned to Virginia, assigned their lease, February 9, 1662/3, to
      Walter Beane, one of the Justices of Charles County (Arch. Md. LIII; 396).
      Just about the time he finally left Virginia, Doughtie, by deed of gift dated