Introduction.            xiii

        finally decided at this time. This is less than half the number in the preceding
        sessions, and even more below the number in earlier sessions.
          The clerk of the Count throughout these two years was John Blomfeild,
        who had served for several years in the past. Like the justices, he was a man
        of many offices, for, in addition to being clerk of the Court and of the Secre-
        tary's office, he was keeper of the lesser seal of the Province and clerk of the
        Council (post, p. 141). Whether he was again, as he had been, chief notary
        of the Province and so entitled to a third of the fees received in the notary's
        office (Archives, V, p. 50) is uncertain. He was to be notary during his Lord-
        ship's pleasure, and when, on July 21, 1670, he was discharged from his post
        as secretary of the Council, and ordered to surrender the lesser seal, his other
        offices were not mentioned (ibid., p. 66). And yet, when he was once more
        sworn in, nothing is said of the notary's office.
          As in earlier years, many men appeared before the Court as attorneys. Some
        were, almost certainly, attorneys in fact only, but when they came before the
        Court and were sworn in as its attorneys, there can be no doubt about it: those
        men were attorneys at law. Twenty-three different men appeared for clients
        or for themselves in this period, but some of them had but one or two cases.
        Only eight or ten had many cases, and only four or five can have been really
        busy at the law. Keneim Cheseldyn, who was at the same time the attorney
        general of the Province, had almost a hundred and fifty clients, and was himself
        a panty in thirteen more, not counting those in which he appeared as attorney
        general. Robert Carvile and Robert Ridgely each had more than a hundred
        cases, and both were panties in many others. Although the Attorney General
        appeared for private clients, and although the clerk of the Court had in other
        years likewise practiced before it, John Blomfeild, now clerk, did not do so. To
        be sure, when he was party to a suit, he appeared without counsel, as atton-
        ucy did in most
          One item which the Court always took into consideration in setting the costs
        of a suit was the attorneys' fees, although they are sometimes not separately
        listed. In November 1676, the Court “Ordered that an Attorney of this Count
        be allowed in a bill of costs the Summe of four hundred pounds of tobacco
        (post, p. 316). This ruling was in accordance with an act of Assembly of Febru-
        ary 1674/5 which set the fees for attorneys in the courts of the Province,
        and it was perhaps made necessary by the fact that the statute, though signed
        by Governor Charles Calvert, did not pass the great seal of the Province until
        February 26, 1679 (Archives, II, pp. 467, 470), when the Governor had become
        the Proprietary. There are, at this time, two suits involving the non-payment
        of attorney's fees, and, oddly enough, in both of them Robert Ridgely was the
        attorney who had not been paid. On December 13, 1674, he said, Thomas
        Carleton had retained him to prosecute, in the Provincial Count, a suit against
        John Cock of Baltimore County, and had promised that he “would well and
        truly Satisfie and pay unto him the said Robert So much as he should deserve
        for his labour travell skill Councell & advice in & about & concerning the prose-
        cution of the suit (post, p. 58). He had prosecuted the suit, and he said that
        Carleton or his executor ought to pay him 400 pounds of tobacco as provided