Introduction. xiii

156, 240). The smallest number that could constitute a court was three
(Archives III, 53), and sometimes the Court had to be adjourned and then
adjourned again because there were not enough justices present to make a court.
The Court sat, as usual, every three months except in midsummer, and except
on Sunday and on Monday (Archives III, 546). In theory every justice was
obliged to be present every day, upon pain of a 4O-shilling fine, but in practice
sometimes there was but one justice on hand, so that the Court adjourned from
day to day, and sometimes from one day until the following session (Archives
LXVI, 390). Not only did the justices have to appear; they had to come, each
"w^th his ribon and medle upon paine of a Noble [a gold coin worth 6/8] for
euery default to the Lord Prop^r" (Archives III, 547). So the Proprietary
himself had said (ibid., XV, 16).

The clerk of the Court, who was also clerk of the secretary's office and
register in chancery, was Nicholas Painter. He had been sworn in, in February
and in April, and he remained in office until 1680. As clerk of the Court, his
duty was to keep the record of proceedings: he could do the work himself
or employ deputies—at his own expense. He had and used latitude in making
up the record from his minute book (Archives XX, 314). Often he groups
several cases in which the point at issue was the same, even if they do not follow
in chronological order. On page 146 post, for example, he enters five cases
from four different counties, in which the sheriff returns that the defendant
is not to be found in his bailiwick. Again and again he records five or six cases
of the allowance of witness fees (post, 47, 69, 78, in, 120), or of the reply by
the defendant that he can say nothing in bar of the claim of the plaintiff (post,
31-34). Too often, though, he just makes errors. He leaves out words which
make the sense uncertain (post, 39), or he writes Solomon instead of Rosamond
(95) or Job instead of John (52). And he follows folio 675 with 677 (post,

1-2).

In all there were seventeen different men who appeared in the Provincial
Court as attorneys. There were, to be sure, attorneys in fact, agents who looked
after a man's interests but did not represent him in court (post, 170). But
these others were attorneys at law, sworn in at earlier sessions or at these (post,
121, 219), and henceforth entitled "to the liberties & priviledges to such like
Attorneys & other Officers & Ministers of the same Court used & allowed ....."
(post, 121). Attorneys duly sworn in were officers of the Court, and when the
justices consulted them, they were consulting their own associates. When, in
1694, the governor and council were debating the organization of a court of
appeals, it was "Resolved that the Kings Attorny Gen" w^th the rest of the
Attorneys now in Towne be sent for irnediatly to give their Advice & Opinion
about the same" (Archives XX, 135-136; XIX, 40). Of the seventeen attorneys
now practicing, only half had many cases, and five or six of them handled the
greater number. Kenelm Cheseldyn, his Lordship's attorney general had fifty-
two cases in his private capacity, in addition to eight in which he represented
the Proprietary. Robert Ridgely had more than eighty cases; in one of them
he sued a former client for his attorney's fee. What seems odd to a present-day
lawyer is that the justices could and did represent clients before the court of