Introduction.            xvii

    the Proprietary had forbidden Bland to Practice in any Maryland court, and
    he declared that Bland made it his business to urge men to go to law. Urging
    men to go to law amounted to barratry and it was an indictable offense. Bland
    said that both of these charges were false: he had not been disbarred by the
    Proprietary nor had he ever stirred up quarrels, either at law or in fact. Though
    the charges were false, said Bland, because of these “False lyeing and scan
    dalous words (post, p. 1 i ) .“ he had utterly lost his employment and even more
    important, his good name. “all his clients and other honble and venerable
    psons of this Province have withdrawne themselves from the Company of the
    said Thomas and . . . refuse in any wise to Deale . . . with the said Thomas”
    (post, p. I 1). Whereupon Thomas sued Hill for 100,000 pounds of tobacco.
    When, after an imparlance, the case came to trial on April 30, 1681, the
    jury was summoned and heard the testimony. When they came back in to court
    to give their verdict, the plaintiff, although solemnly called, did not appear.
    Therefore the Court considered that Bland take nothing by his writ, and that
    Hill go without day, with provision that he recover against Bland his costs with
    execution (post, pp. 9-12).
    Because land remained the dominant, almost the only source of wealth, there
    was the expected number of cases about it. Though there was the Land Coun
    cil it had been set up only recently, on April 19, 1680, and most of the cases
    followed the old pattern. There is but one case about the escheat of land, and
    it was inconclusive. Major John Wheeler had gone to much expense to prove
    that a piece of land had escheated to the Proprietary, and he wanted to have it
    granted to him as the discoverer. The rules of escheat rested on the pleasure of
    the Proprietary, but the discoverer was always considered. Before Wheeler
    could get his claim decided, he heard that the Proprietary and the Council
    had ordered that Philip Lynes have it. Hearing this he petitioned that he be
    reimbursed for the amount he had spent in escheating the land. The total was
    2650 pounds of tobacco. Included in it was a mutton and thirty gallons of
    cider spent on the first jury (post, p. 171). The Council considered the peti
    tion and ordered that Philip Lynes, likely to have the land, pay Major Wheeler
    most but not all of his claims (Archives XVII, 79-80). It is easily possible
    that Wheeler's petition to the Proprietary and the Council does not belong at
    all to the proceedings of the Provincial Court, but to those of the Council:
    part of the substance of the petition is found in those proceedings (Archives
    XVII, 79-80).

      There were no grants by the Proprietary, although, since he was in the
    Province, approaches for grants would have been easy. But there were several
    cases turning on land titles, transfers from one private person to another. In
    all these cases the procedure was similar. A man might own the land without
    having possession of it. Hereupon he leased it, demised it to someone for a
    term of years, and the lessee entered and was possessed of it. Later, perhaps
    later the same day, another man entered onto the land and ejected the lessee:
    he was the casual ejector. Then the lessee sued the casual ejector for sterling
    or for tobacco. The Court said that unless the tenant in possession (who might
    be the casual ejector) or the persons under whom he claimed appeared, con-