xxx                  Introduction.

       July 16, 1669, conveyed cattle which he owned in Maryland to his Oneal
       grandchildren, the children of his daughter Mary, who had married as her
       second husband the Indian fighter, Captain Hugh Oneal (p. 206). These cattle
       were doubtless on the Oneal plantation. A sketch of Doughtie's colorful career
       by Louis Dow Scisco has appeared in the Maryland Historical Magazine
       (XXXIII, 1928, 155-162); and further notes on him will be found in the
       introduction to an earlier volume of the Archives (LIII, xxvi, xxxiv, lii-lv).
         John Legett (Legatt) followed Doughtie as minister in Charles County.
       Nothing has been learned of his English antecedents, nor do the Maryland
       records indicate whether he had leanings towards non-conformity or Puritan-
       ism, as had Doughtie and Hill. The first mention of him by name was on
       November 18, 1662, when he appears as a witness to a Charles County letter of
       attorney (Arch. Md. LIII; 270), but it is quite possible, however, that Legett
       was in Charles County earlier in this year. At the March, 1661/2 court,
       Edmund Lindsay sued for, and recovered from, a certain William Hills one
       hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco which Hills had promised some time
       before to pay to Lindsay as churchwarden for the minister (unnamed) and
       for the building of a church (ibid. 192). This was doubtless the new minister,
       Legett, as it is unlikely that the retiring parson, Doughtie, would have been
       interested in the new venture of building a church. The location of this church
       will be referred to later. On March 17, 1662/3, Legett purchased from Thomas
       Carvill a plantation of four hundred acres, called “Smootly”, on the west side
       of Wicomico River (ibid. 345). At about the same date, at the March, 1662/3,
       court, he was charged by the Portuguese Jew, Jacob (John) Lumbrozo of un-
       savory record, with having married certain servants without license, but was
       found not guilty by the court (Arch. Md. XLIX; 84-85). A suit in Chancery,
       heard in May 1675, shows that Legett died March 7, 1663/4, without issue,
       and that because of a defect in the title his plantation was escheat to the Pro-
       prietary. The court ordered that one third of it be reserved for the use of his
       widow Bridgett for life (Arch. Md. LI, 147-8, 480-483). In 1674 she was
       sued by her husband's clerical successor, the Rev. Matthew Hill, for refus-
       ing to return certain cattle to him (pp. 505-506). A suit heard at the March,
       1669/70, court, to be referred to more fully later, indicates that Bridgett
       Legett when she married the Reverend John Leggett was the widow of William
       Hungerford of Charles County, who had died some time previous to October,
       1662; and that she had a Hungerford son, a “youth” of the same name as
       his father, who was being taught to “write & Cast Accts” by Nehemiah Blakis-
       ton (pp. xlii, 247).

         There was an interval between 1665 and 1669, the latter being the date when
       Hill came to Charles County, when there was apparently no Protestant minister
       in this county. At the November, 1665, court, when a woman living with Giles
       Tompkinson was charged with bastardy, Tompkinson declared in court that
       he was the father of the child with which she was then pregnant, and “that his
       marriage was as good as possibly it Coold bee maed by the Protestants hee
       beeing one becaus that befor that time and euer since thear hath not bin a
       protestant Minister in the Prouince and that to Matrimony is only nesessary the