cii Introduction.

Parliament had interfered to prevent other issues. The Maryland authorities
felt, however, that if the payment of its recent issue was secured by an ample
sinking fund held by Trustees in London and a provision in the act specifically
stated that it was not to be considered legal tender unless this was specifically
provided by contract, it would not run afoul of the parliamentary prohibition.
The correspondence of Governor Sharpe with the Proprietary, Frederick, Lord
Baltimore, and his Secretary, Hugh Hamersley, reveals, however, that they
had some misgivings as to its legality being unquestioned (Arch. Md. XIV, 352,
356, 390, 396, 397, 416). Events showed, however, that the legality of the
issue was not brought into question by the British Government.

Following the passage of the act for the emission of these Bills of Credit
the houses sent a joint address to Frederick, Lord Baltimore, requesting him to
have supervision over the Trustees in London, who had charge of the Bank of
England stock held as a sinking fund for their redemption, which the Pro-
prietary expressed much pleasure in doing. This has already been discussed
earlier in the Introduction (p. xxxii). The death on April 27, 1767, of
William Hunt, a prominent London merchant and one of the Trustees of the
sinking fund for this and the preceding issue of Bills of Credit, was reported at
the 1768 Assembly by his son Thomas Hunt, his executor (pp. 290-291). The
executor asked that an act be passed to authorize him to make a payment of
£381:18: 10, which he said was due to the Province by his father, but which
afterwards turned out to have been long since paid (pp. 319, 349, 353, 421;
Arch. Md. XXXII, 220).

THE REGULATION AND LICENSING OF ORDINARIES AND OF HAWKERS

AND PEDDLERS

A dispute about the disposition of license fees from ordinaries or inns, which
had existed in Maryland for three-quarters of century, came to a head and
ended in 1766. Following the Protestant Revolution of 1689 ordinary license
fees, which before this had been granted by Lord Baltimore as a perquisite
to his Provincial Secretary, had, following the Revolution, when Maryland
had become politically a Royalist Province, been claimed both by the people
and by the Provincial Secretary, who was then appointed by the Crown. Since
the restoration of the Province to the Calverts in 1715, the fees had been
insistently claimed by the Lord Proprietary as under his prerogative, and even
more insistently demanded by the Lower House for the public. The story of
this struggle during recent years is fully told in the introduction of recent
volumes of the Archives (LII, ix-x; LIV, liii; LVI, lxvii-lxviii; LVIII,
lxvii-lxviii; LIX, xxxvi-xxxvii). This controversy had in recent years pre-
vented the passage of legislation regulating inns and innkeepers.

At practically every session of the Assembly bills were introduced in the
Lower House, and passed by it, for the licensing and regulation of ordinaries,
the license fees and fines to go to the public, and these bills had been as regularly
rejected by the Upper House acting under orders from the Proprietary.

At the November-December, 1765, session, the usual Lower House licensing
bill, instead of being passed by the house and sent over to the upper cham-