xxvi Introduction.

to a comprehensive act for the improvement of the roads in Anne-Arundel,
Baltimore and Frederick Counties. By order of the Lower House the bill
was drafted by the delegates of those three counties alone (p. 324), and during
its passage, it received an unusual amount of attention (pp. 338, 340, 341-342).
It passed the Lower House easily, 29 to 13, though half of those who drafted
it, voted against it and tried to get it postponed to the next session (pp. 342,
348). The Upper House passed it the same day it was sent up to them and
the Governor sealed it into law (pp. 295, 302). The Act relating to the Public
Roads in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, and Frederick Counties specified what
roads should be built and how much money should be spent on each one. For
construction and maintenance, the roads were divided into six districts, each
with three supervisors. All the roads were "to be well cleared grubbed and
stoned forty feet wide except the said Road leading to Annapolis which shall
be ... thirty feet wide" (p. 396).

The roads were paid for out of a special road tax on the taxables of the
counties concerned, four pounds in Anne Arundel, twelve pounds in Baltimore
and eight pounds in Frederick County. Besides these new or altered roads,
provision was made for the upkeep of others in these counties. Every taxable
was ordered to work six days a year eight hours a day on road repair and to
bring with him his own tools. At the same session, a law was passed for a road
from the free school in Somerset County to a point on the main Worcester
County road, so that sclrolars and visitors from Worcester County could get
to the school more easil^p. 409). The Eden School, as it was called, was the
official free school for both counties.

Since the setting up of the Establishment, every session of the Assembly had
seen introduced and passed some law for the benefit of a particular parish.
These 1773-1774 session were no exception. All Hallows Parish, Worcester
County, asked for and got 45,000 pounds of tobacco for a chapel of ease in
the lower part of the parish (p. 371). The parishes were so large and the roads
so bad that getting in to Snow Hill Town to attend church was impossible. All
Saints Parish Calvert County got 200,000 pounds, spread over three years, for
a new church (pp. 370-371). One of the trustees was the rector, the Rev.
Thomas John Clagett, later the first Protestant Episcopal Bishop in America.
Two others at least had been members of the Lower House. Christ Church
Parish, also in Calvert County, had been trying for a year or so to get money
to finish their building. In the short October convention of Assembly a bill
to that end was passed, but the adjournment and the prorogation of the
Assembly had prevented it from becoming law. Now in the November session
a bill for them passed the Lower House, only to be defeated in the Upper
House (pp. 38, 337, 292, 343). St. Paul's Parish Baltimore County asked for
a new church (pp. 57, in) but it got nowhere, even in the Lower House.

St. Anne's Parish Annapolis was, unofficially, the parish church of the
Assembly. The rector and vestry had tried in June 1773 to get a new church
building, but their petition was referred to the next session (Archives, LXIII,
322, 367, 375), and in the October and the November sessions it was again
referred (pp. 36, in). In the March-April 1774 session, action was taken.