xviii              Introduction.




          of the Court. In one case, Thomas Chandler and William Russell, who had
          formerly sued each other (post, pp. 397, 401), were jointly sued by John Wells,
          a professional informer (ibid., 2 18-222, 388, 564). Russell and Chandler then
          sued (ibid., pp. 225, 243, 291, 319), but when the case came up for trial, they
          did not appear and the case was dismissed (ibid., 319). On February 1,
          1673/4, Wells's case against them resulted in judgments against them for
          16,500 pounds of tobacco, with costs totalling 1148 pounds more (ibid., 218-
          222). In the Upper House, to which the cases were taken by Chandler and
          Russell on writ of error, they assigned no errors, the writs were quashed and
          the decision stood (Archives, II, p. 432). Wells had been awarded his costs
          and that half of the penalty which an informer always got, but the defendants
          came to some kind of settlement out of court. On May 4, 1675, the case was
          settled by agreement (post, p. 564).
           Another dispute, that of Raymond Staplefort v. John Balley, which had been
          in the courts for ten years, had a Provincial Court decision on April i8,
          1674 (post, pp. 256-257). By it, execution was issued against Bailey for £2000
          sterling, for which Staplefort had obtained a judgment on February 9, 1668
          (Archives, II, 364). The tenacious Bailey, though he was in the custody of the
          sheriff, sued out a writ of error to the Upper House, on June 2, 1674, and
          when he proved to the satisfaction of that body what skulduggery Staplefort
          had practiced on him, he was given an annulment of judgment (ibid., 381).

                              CRIMINAL CASES

           For the two-year period from February 1670/1, the Provincial Court was
          concerned with criminal cases only, as the formula with which the sessions
          opened shows clearly. The Governor and the other members were “Justices
          assigned to Keepe the peace in the Province of Maryland aforesaid, moreover
          to heare and Determine diverse fellony & transgressions and other misdemeanors
          in the said Province perpetrated and Comitted” (post, p. 1). Included among
          the felonies and misdemeanors were murder, petty treason, burglary, theft,
          assault and battery, keeping an unlicensed ordinary and the altering of cattle
          marks, indeed a diverse lot. As is the case today, cases came before the court
          in one of three ways: by indictment, voted by the grand jury after the attorney
          general had laid the accusation before them; by presentment by the grand jury
          itself without any bill of indictment by the government; by information filed
          by some officer of the government without the intervention of the grand jury.
          All these methods were used in this period. Sometimes the clerk has given a
          complete and full account of the case, sometimes only a summary.
           There were four cases of murder tried by the Court now, and one of petty
          treason, (the killing of a master by his servants, of a husband by his wife, or of
          a high ecclesiastic by one of his inferiors). The case of the Province against
          James Sall, John the Negro, Robert Warry, Robert Spear and Tony the Negro,
          all laborers, all servants to the late John Hawkins of Elk River, is set forth at
          length. Mr. Attorney General Lowe delivered the indictment for petty treason.
          The five of them “with certaine Axes of the vallue of forty pence which
          they . . . did severally hold in their hands and upon the foremaned Hawkins