xxii Introduction.

of the Sheriff who was then out of town, the committee had learned from the
Jailer that the prisoners had no allowance of "vittles", but were each allowed for

sustenance only thirteen "coppers" a week and salt and water, until a week be-
fore, when two "coppers" had been added for their whole maintenance; and
that but four cords of wood had been allowed them since Christmas, nearly
five months before, and that they had been kept without wood, except what
they could beg from passersby from the prison windows ever since the month
of March; that they have no other means to spend their allowance for pro-
visions "but by entrusting it to Passers bye and therefore they are constrained
to lay it out in Bakers Bread, the small quantity of which that can be Pur-
chased for their Allowance they Assert, and your Committee believe, is not
Sufficient of itself to support Nature" (pp. 27-28). On reading the report
of the committee, the house ordered that the Sergeant-at-arms summon Joseph
Galloway, Esq., High Sheriff of Anne Arundel County, before the bar of the
house to answer the complaint of the prisoners. Galloway seems to have once
eluded the Sergeant-at-arms, but was finally brought before the bar of the
house, where he and various witnesses were heard (p. 47). The house there-
upon resolved that "the said Joseph Galloway hath not complied with his Duty
as Sheriff and that he be Acquainted therewith by the Speaker with a Caution
to be more careful in Discharge of his Duty in relation to the Prisoners and
Public Gaol for the future." The only punishment inflicted upon him was the
requirement that he pay the usual fee to the officers of the Lower House for
the trouble which had been given them in summoning witnesses (p. 49). Three
years later similar charges were brought by the Lower House against Richard
Lee, Sheriff of St Mary's County, for conditions found in the jail of that
county (Votes and Proceeding of the Loiver House for 1769, p. 235).

Licences from ordinaries and hawkers and pedlars. The long standing griev-
ances between the Proprietary and the people were again brought before the
Lower House when, on May 17th, on motion of Thomas Ringgold, a com-
mittee of three, headed by Ringgold, with Johnson and John Hall as associates,
was ordered to bring in a bill for regulating ordinaries or inns; and on the
same day a committee of five, also headed by Ringgold, with Wilson, Hollyday,
John Hall, and Chase, were ordered to bring in a bill for licensing hawkers and
peddlers. The constitutional question at issue in both these bills was of course
the claim of the Proprietary that the license fees and fines belonged to him
and not to the public (pp. cii-cv, 22). The bills were brought in a few days later.
It seemed likely that the bill for licensing ordinaries stood a good chance for
passage at this session, since Daniel Dulany recently had given his opinion to
the Proprietary that there was no legal means by which the latter could enforce
payment to himself of these licenses and fines. But the bill as passed by the
Lower House at this May, 1766, session, of which there is no copy, was
amended in so many details by the Upper House, that when returned it was
rejected by the lower chamber (pp. 22, 27, 30, 48, 49-50, 59-60). It was to
come up again at the next session and once more to meet a similar fate, but
to be finally passed at the 1768 Assembly.

Baltimore Town. Two petitions from inhabitants of Baltimore Town were