Introduction.          xxxvii

     provided in his indenture, dated July 27, 1663, calling for a four year term
     of service. The master claimed additional time because, he said, there was due
     to him two months and seven days time when Ralston had been a runaway
     from a former master. The jury gave him his freedom, not only because he
     had, since his indenture had expired, already served more time than the addi-
     tional runaway time claimed, but also because Johnson had not entered suit in
     time to entitle him to the benefit of the act of Assembly under which he sued.
     The jury, however, found that Johnson could elect either to give corn and
     clothes, or £10 sterling, as he pleased, but that both could not be claimed by
     Ralston. Costs were assessed by the court against the master. Johnson then
     entered an appeal to the Provincial Court, but the county court ordered that
     Ralston be free unless Johnson prosecuted his appeal (pp. 108- 110). The Pro-
     vincial Court proceedings do not show that Johnson ever prosecuted an appeal.
       The court, all the members of which doubtless had indentured servants on
     their plantations or in their households, seems to have felt that certain attorneys
     were responsible for unwarranted suits for freedom brought against masters.
     At the March, 1673, court, it was ordered that “Whereas sevall Attorneyes have
     undertaken to mafiage Servts Causes agst their Maisters & Mrs to the Mrs &
     Mrss greate charge & damage It is ordered that no pson Act as Attorney for any
     Servt hereafter, But such as the Court shall appointe” (p. 496). Whether this
     was really a lawyers' racket as the justices felt, or whether as holders of in-
     dentured servants they feared that their rights were being undermined, is left
     to the reader to decide. As will be seen, certain planters seem to have been
     dealers in servants. In two instances servants were given by their masters in
     exchange for land (pp. 147, 169). A number of servants with foreign names,
     especially Dutch, appear on the record.
       There are a number of suits for damages by masters against other house-
     holders for having harbored runaway servants, brought under the provisions
     of the act of 1671. Under this law the harborer not only was obliged to pay
     damages to the master, but also a fine to the Lord Proprietary and a reward to
     the informer. One suspects that stories, often only too true, of masters' cruelty
     to servants influenced humane “entertainers” in harboring the runaways. Cap-
     tain Hugh Oneal at the March, 1672/3, court, recovered from John Morris
     and Hugh French 400 pounds of tobacco damages and 1020 pounds for costs
     of suit, for entertaining for several weeks and refusing to return to her master,
     Rachell Cooke, Oneal's maid servant. No testimony is recorded, but 400 pounds
     damages and costs were awarded to the owner (p. 495). One wonders whether
     this was a bachelor's establishment and Rachell a comely lass. John Courts,
     at the August, 1674, court, entered suit against John Hartwell for himself
     and on “behalf of the Lord Proprietary”. It was shown that Hartwell had
     entertained a runaway man servant at his Portobacco plantation for four days.
     He was fined 1500 pounds of tobacco, 5oo pounds a day for three of the days,
     one-half to go to the master and one-half to the Lord Proprietary (pp. 581 -582).
     At the June, 1673, court, Alexander Smith sued a servant's former owner, no
     less a person than John Allen, the then sheriff of Charles County, who had
     sold him a servant with five years' time to serve, whom the court had set free