xvi                  Introduction.

            and the dispute is heard of no more (post, pp. 292-293). Where the title to
            land was disputed, a jury of the neighborhood might be ordered to have the
            land surveyed and to make a return to the justices (post, pp. 27, 475, 490).
            Sometimes, when the Court had decided that one party recover damages
            against the other, it was not able to say just how much those damages ought
            to be, and a jury, got together exactly as if for a trial, was summoned to
            decide the amount. And invariably, the Court granted the amount of damages
            recommended by the jury (post, p 229).

                           IMPORTANT CIVIL CASES

              Of civil cases, the only kind heard at this time, there were some four hun-
            dred and fifty or five hundred. Pages and pages of them have only one brief
            entry, because they were agreed or abated or continued (See for instance,
            pp. 148 if). Aside from these, there are hundreds in which the clerk has
            recorded something to interest the modern lawyer or the historian. Every case
            docketed is entered in the Table of Cases at the end of the volume, under the
            plaintiff and also under the defendant, and the matters treated are entered in
            the index. Some of them deserve comment here. The great majority of these
            cases concerned some form of debt, arising out of an undertaking, whether
            written or unwritten. There are a good hundred and fifty cases where the
            plaintiff produced in court a writing obligatory signed with the seal of him the
            defendant, and declared that he had had nothing under it.
              Many matters involving land appear in these records. Some of them were
            no more than indentures for the sale or the lease of land, for the Land Office
            was not yet separated from the Provincial Court, and the land records were
            still kept in the Secretary's office. The process of obtaining land from the
            Proprietary was not changed. An immigrant first proved his rights to land,
            depending on the number of persons he had brought in with him, and then
            he was given a warrant. Then the county surveyor, deputy to the surveyor gen-
            eral, surveyed the land and returned a certificate to the Secretary's office. The
            last step to be taken, a step often delayed as long as possible, was the obtaining
            of a patent. The patent, which marked the beginning of the quit rents, had to
            be taken out within a certain time, or the land escheated to the Proprietary.
            The indentures here were all deeds of sale or leases, although all of them
            went back to grants, and indeed, often recited the line of title somewhere in the
            deed (post, pp. 6, 131, 179,315).

              Although a patent was supposed to be final, and, in the great majority of
            cases, was final, it could be cancelled and the land escheated to the Proprietary.
            Several times this happened for non-payment of rent. Bartholomew Glevin,
            chirurgeon, died in December 1665, leaving two hundred acres of land called
            “Craney Neck”, leaving no heirs. No rent had been paid, and, since Glevin's
            death, the land had lain waste, so that there was nothing on it but a tumble-
            down tobacco house, one apple tree and a few other fruit trees. The Anne
            Arundel records showed nothing about “Craney Neck”, what the rent or the
            services were, or of what proprietary manor it was held. All land had to be
            held of some proprietary manor. The commissioners appointed to enquire into