xx                   Introduction.

           solely possessed thereof, & is departed this Province & left Mr Ladd his Attorny
           to whom he hath given power to dispose off the Said Land & also of a servant
           left with him which did belong to the estate of the Orphants of Wm Cole.”
           Upon these premises, Mrs. Younger, who was executrix of her husband, Claw,
           humbly begged “that the said writeings may be cancelled & the Land & Servant
           remaine in whom in Equity it doth belong”. When the petition was read in
           court, April 23, 1677, Boteler said that no consideration had ever been paid
           by him to Younger, although a valuable consideration is the very life of a
           contract. The Court granted the petition as prayed. Attorney Ladd, one of
           the commissioners for Calvert County (Archives, XV, p. 37), who was appar-
           ently an attorney in fact only, was ordered to appear at the next court and to
           bring Younger's estate with him (post, pp. 471, 404). The Court, “being
           willing to doe right to the said Sarah”, ordered the sheriff of Calvert to get
           from Ladd the deed from Boteler to Younger, and the supporting papers, and
           to put all the material in the Secretary's office. Ladd refused to deliver the
           papers until the Court gave him a receipt to protect him against Younger.
           This done, he delivered some papers “in a small box vizt. A patent for 500
           Acres of land under the great seale of this province . . . granted to Wm Claw,
           One deed of sale of the said Land by Charles Boteler to the Said Alexander
           Younger dated the 5th of December 1676 . . . [a] receipt for three yeares rent
           for the said Land dated 13th of December 1676. Sarah Claw her Letter of
           administration upon the estate of the Said Wm Claw, dated the 19th Novem-
           ber 1675” (Liber NN, p. 367). What happened after that, is not sure. The
           rascally husband Younger had departed the Province months before.

                                SERVANTS

             Most of the cases dealing with servants came up in the county courts and
           were heard there finally, but they could appear and did appear in the Provincial
           Court, despite the small sums of tobacco involved. On April 26, 1677, the
           Court said, formally, that it was “the judgment of the Court here That
           Servants under age may be adjudged here what age they are of, aswell as in
           the County Courts.” (post, p. 475). And the Court did so adjudge several
           times. Clerk Blomfeild's servant, Isaac Vickers, was judged to be fourteen
           years old. Three servants of Sheriff Vincent Lowe were judged to be eleven or
           twelve years old. Others were not much older (post, 8o, 126, 360, 424, 475).
           Most of the servants were white men and women from the British Isles, to
           judge by their names and their stories, but there were negroes among them,
           too. There are several cases here where the servant petitioned the Court for
           his freedom, and he—or she—always got it. Persons held to servitude, whether
           the holding was just or unjust, had to bring up their situation by way of peti-
           tion, since they had not the capacity to sue at law. James Hall and Rowland
           Soly told the Court that they had bargained with Captain James Allison,
           master of the ketch Betty, from New England, for their passage to Maryland,
           and that of the forty shillings agreed on, they had paid thirty, and had arranged
           to pay him 500 pounds of tobacco. They said they had offered the tobacco,
           but that the Captain had refused to accept it. Instead, he had sold them to