xxxii                Introduction.

        have refused to conform as offensive to his conscience. For a while he had a
        chaplainship at Gatten near London. Apparently on account of bad health, he
        went to the West Indies, carrying nothing with him but a “few cloaths, a Bible
        a Concordance, and a small parcell of MSS.” “He fixed at Charles County,
        Maryland, in 1669, where a brighter scene began to open, and he had a pros-
        pect of considerable usefulness in the ministry, and of a good advantage by his
        labours in temporal respects. But new troubles afterwards arose, which greatly
        disappointed his hopes.” What these troubles were, we are not told; nor
        anything further about his life in America, nor the date of his death. He is
        described by Calamy as a man of ready abilities, a good scholar, a serious,
        warm, and lively preacher, and of a free and generous spirit.
          On May 1, 1672, Hill patented a tract of 400 acres of land in Portobacco
        Hundred, Charles County, under the name Poppleton”, named by him for a
        parish and hamlet on the outskirts of his native city, York. (Patent Record
        Liber No. 16, folio 598; Land Office, Annapolis). The last references as yet
        found to Matthew Hill in Charles County were in the years 1673 and 1674. At
        the August, 1673, court, Hill sued Bridgett Legett, the widow of John Legett
        his predecessor as the minister of Charles County, for harboring a cow and
        calf belonging to him. These the court ordered her to return to Hill (pp. 505-
        506). She had doubtless had the cattle at the 400 acre plantation which her
        husband, John Legett, had purchased on March 17, 1662/3, on the north side
        of Wicomico River, adjoining the lands of John Hatch and John Courts
        (Arch. Md. LIII; 343-345). A month later, in September, 1673, Hill, now
        described as “clerk”, was reported sick (p. 508). His last appearance in these
        records was in a suit heard at the January, 1673-4, court, for a wedding fee.
        The evidence showed that he had waited five years before suing Robert Cady
        for 100 pounds of tobacco for marrying him in 1669 to his wife Elizabeth,
        but the court awarded him his fee and the costs of suit. He died in 1679.
        His wife, Edith Beane, may not have survived him for, on October 7, 1679,
        Henry Bonner requested the Probate Court to appoint Eleanor Beane, the
        mother of Hill's wife Edith, the administratrix of his estate.
          The name of Henry Warren (alias Peiham), the Jesuit priest, whose activ-
        ities have been referred to in a previous volume of the Archives (LVII, liv-lv),
        appears twice in this record. After the death of a certain George Manwering
        of Charles County, his plantation overseer, Alexander Sennet, petitioned the
        court to order the administrators, Henry Adams and Thomas Mathews, both
        prominent Catholics and both justices, to pay him 1570 pounds of tobacco
        which the books and accounts of the deceased showed were due him. This was
        ordered at the August, 1672, court, after a certificate by “Mr. Henry Warren”,
        dated March 9, 1672, was presented, declaring that “Mr. George Manwaring
        on his death bead” had acknowledged this indebtedness to Sennet (p. 399). In
        a case involving a runaway servant boy heard at the September, 1674, court,
        a witness refers to “Me Henry Warrens Overseer” (p. 582).
          The single mention of a church in this court record is to be found in the
        evidence of a certain Matthew Saunders, a witness in a suit involving an ex-
        change of cattle, heard at the September, 1674, court, who deposed that, as he