xxxvi                Introduction.

       was no written contract, beyond the “customary” seven year time; or on
       account of extra time claimed when the servant had a record of absence from
       having “run away.” Disputes were perhaps most frequent when servants had
       passed by assignment from one master to another. Freedom was also sought
       on grounds of cruelty. There were numerous suits of masters of runaway
       servants against other householders for harboring runaways without notifying
       their masters. In the case of a girl with a runaway record, juries were not prone
       to allow the “runaway time” to be added to her term of service, if she had been
       severely whipped each time she had run away. The usual, or “customary”,
       period of indentured service was seven years unless the indenture specifically
       provided a different term, or servitude had begun in childhood, when it was
       ordinarily extended until majority. The relations between masters and ser-
       vants, as brought out by the court records of this period, have already been
       quite fully discussed in an earlier volume of the Archives (LIII, xxxi-xxxiv).
         It was customary at court sessions, under the act of 1661, to have the ages
       of recently acquired servants who were under age determined in open court
       and made a matter of record. During the nine year period covered by this
       record 181 servants in all had their ages thus adjudged by the Charles County
       Court. The purpose of this was to prevent future disputes as to when the
       term of service had expired and a servant had became free. There are some
       instances of this recorded for the nine year period covered by this record.
       Whether the relatively fewer whippings ordered by the court during this
       period, as compared with the record of the preceding nine years, was due to a
       more humanitarian attitude on the part of the court, or is more apparent than
       real and due to the failure of the changing and incompetent court clerks to
       enter such orders in the record, is difficult to decide. That the coroner in one
       year held three inquests over the bodies of dead servants is not without sig-
       nificance as to the hardships to which they were exposed.
         A few examples of suits by servants against masters are illustrative. Japhet
       Griphin, a servant, sued his master, John Hatch, a well known planter, for his
       freedom and for the “customary” allowance of corn and clothing, declaring
       that his time (seven years) had expired. Hatch said that “he bought the
       Plaintife. . .. for ten yeares but acknowledged he hath noe Indenture to testifie
       the sale.” The purchase had been made on November 23, 1659, soon after the
       ship he came in had arrived. The case was heard before a jury. Evidence was
       presented that Griphin had run away and had been “brought back by hue and
       crye.” Griphin declared “he went away” because his time had expired, and that
       he had not “run away.” The jury found that Hatch had “floe proofe tht the
       Plaintife was Servant for 10 years; therefore in our Conscience he is free
       having served as much time as can in equitie be required”; and further found
       that he ought to have his corn and clothes without the advantage to his master
       “by absence [as a runaway] of service in the seaven years legallie proved” (pp.
       46-47). In an action for freedom by a servant, David Ralston, against his
       master, Daniel Johnson, at the September, 1667, court, Ralston demanded £10
       sterling as well as “one good Cloth Suit of Kersey a Shift of White Linnen, one
       new paire of Stockins and Shoes, two hoes and an Axe” as the consideration