xxvi                 Introduction.

           considered that the partner creditors should have damages of £561 sterling
           and 758 pounds of tobacco for costs, “but so as the debts of the Country of a
           higher nature be first paid & Satisfied.” (post, pp. 325-327). Presumably debts
           of a higher nature were those owed the Proprietary. There were other cases
           in which a plea of debts of a higher nature was made, always by an administra-
           tor, to bar payments to individual creditors (post, pp. 342, 352, 370, 447), but
           none of them relate to maritime affairs. The phrase is nowhere explained.
             Seven seamen from Weymouth, England, belonging to the ship or pink John
           of Weymouth, William Drady master, could not collect the wages due them.
           The term “pink” was applied to different types of vessels of which the chief
           common characteristic was a high, narrow stern. Accordingly, they authorized
           Richard Bayley or Bayly, innholder, then of Harvey Town, Calvert County,
           to sue John Parker, Captain Drady's executor, for their time and service done
           in the pink (post, p. 258). Bayley did sue Parker, and also William Dare,
           who had become in turn executor to Parker (post, pp. 166, 347, 410), and
           the case was settled out of court. Dare paid over to Bayley 6000 pounds of
           tobacco, and Bayley gave him a receipt for it, and a release from “all wages &
           Demands whatsoever belonging or in any wayes apperteining to the Said
           Seamen . . . & all & Euery other matter Cause or thing whatsoever from ye
           beginning of ye world unto” the date of the release. Bayley had had to be
           prodded into giving the release. On the backside of it there is a note signed
           by George Masson, deputy sheriff of Calvert County, that he had “arrested
           Richard Bayly in ye Sute of William Dare ye first munday after ye Provinc”
           Court held in ffebry 1675 [/6] & ye said Richard Bayly was Discharged from
           me ye day following aboute ten of ye Clock in ye morning” (post, p. 259).
           And the release was not signed sealed and delivered until “after the Said
           Bayly was discharged from ye Sheriffe (ibid.).
             There was always an active trade between Bristol, England, and the Prov-
           ince, and sometimes it came into court. A Bristol grocer named Richard Pope
           the Younger, on September 9, 1667, signed a contract with Richard Royston
           for a voyage to Maryland. Pope was part owner of the ship Richard and James,
           William Nichlas or Nichols master; for himself and the other owners he “did
           grant & to freight lett twenty & five tunns of the tunnage of the said Shipp unto
           Richard Royston aforesaid for the voyage whereon she was then bound being
           for Virginia & the Said Richard did for himselfe thereby Covenant promise &
           grant that the Company belonging to the said Shipp should fetch & receive the
           said ffreighters goods & merchandizes on board the said Shipp in Virginia
           aforesaid with boats or sloops according to the Custome of the Country there,
           within threescore dayes So as the same goods shall lye & be within One mile
           of Some convenient landing place in Choptanck River & from thence by the
           Bay side unto Kent Island”. For this, Royston agreed to “pay for the freight
           of the said twenty five tunns be the same laden or not laden the full Summe of
           Eleaven pounds of lawfull mony of England p Tunn accounting foure hoges-
           heads to a tunn.” But in the Province, Royston did not succeed in getting to-
           gether enough tobacco, although he had to pay for the tonnage whether he
           used it or not. Accordingly, in May 1668, he let five tons of the twenty-five