xxviii Introduction.

be, when the Committee to determine what laws would expire at the end of
the session, reported, on November 23, 1773, they underlined the fact that the
"law for the speedy and effectual Publication of the Laws of this Province,
and for the Encouragement of Anne Catharine Green" already had expired
a year before (p. 91). A bill to continue Mrs. Green was introduced with no
haste (p. 140), passed quickly by the Upper House (p. 71) and sealed into
law by the Governor December (p. 74). Save for the one year provision it
differed little from earlier acts. It did provide for paying her for what she
had done since December 1773 despite the failure of the law. Each county had
to allow her set sums of tobacco in the annual county levy, and for that tobacco
she was obliged to print bind and deliver laws and votes and proceedings to
the Governor and the members and clerks of both Houses, and three copies
of each to the county clerks for the use of the inhabitants (232-233) Magis-
trates and judges and courts got copies bound in leather instead of the blue
or marbled paper of the others. Mrs. Green had to continue to live in Annapo-
lis, but to compensate her for this restriction, she got an allowance, a smaller
one, even when there was no session of assembly. The act had the usual pro-
vision for marginal notes, a provision for which modern scholars are most
grateful; to have to try to understand the inspection law, for instance, without
their guidance would be immeasurably more difficult, if indeed it would be
possible. One provision that might be expected is not found: there is no
requirement at all for supervision of her work, nor for comparison of it by
responsible officers of the government with the originals.

The ship Chance Ca.pt. Robert Campbell from London caused excitement in
Annapolis in the spring of 1774. Her entry is recorded in the Maryland Gazette
of March 10, 1774, and the same issue contains an advertisement of what she
brought for sale. Her main cargo was indented servants, men and women, who
had four or five or six years to serve. Most of them were trained to some trade:
there were masons, blacksmiths, sawyers, shoemakers, breeches-makers, farmers,
wigmakers and weavers; of the women, some were cooks or sewing women,
some had "been accustomed to the farming business," as milking, making butter
and cheese, haymaking, reaping, etc. She brought, too, fabrics, from hemp
osnabrigs to Manchester velvets, and powder and shot "and two tons of very
fine oakum." What perturbed the lawmakers was the fact, exaggerated greatly,
that she had disease aboard. It was believed that the disease was putrid fever,
or typhus, but the report of the mate (Appendix III) shows that it was less
than that. When she put in to Hampton Roads, she got fresh pork, green
vegetables and peas. Of these a great soup was made and the soup made
everyone ill. The Assembly acted with panicky haste. A bill to prevent infec-
tion from the ship Chance was introduced, passed, sent to the other house,
signed by the Governor and made effective within one day (pp. 279-280, 312,
363-364). The vessel was ordered removed at least a mile from shore, and
everyone on her was forbidden to come ashore without the Governor's permit.
The sheriff was directed to supply her with necessities and to arrange for a
place on shore at a safe distance where she might be moored. By the middle
of April the people were recovering, and the vessel was ordered turned over to