INTRODUCTION

When Volume LXX was in preparation for the printer the Publications
Committee of the Maryland Historical Society undertook a study of the
Archives of Maryland looking at once in two directions: toward the past and
to the future.

- 1 -

In retrospect it was clear that this series has been one of the foremost among
the documentary collections in the nation. Its preeminence rests on the im-
portance of the archival materials reproduced and the quality of the editing.
Beginning in 1883 under the editorship of William Hand Browne, the Archives
of Maryland have unrolled through seventy volumes with the following succes-
sion of editors: Clayton Coleman Hall, Bernard Christian Steiner, J. Hall
Pleasants, Raphael Semmes, and Elizabeth Merritt.

Under the direction of these editors six subordinate series have come into
existence:

		Number of	Inclusive dates
	Sub-series	volumes	of textual material
	Proceedings and Acts of the	32	1637/38-1774
	General Assembly
	Proceedings of the Council	11	1636-1770
	Correspondence of Governor	4	1753-1771
	Horatio Sharpe
	Muster Rolls	1	1775-1783
	Court Series	15	1637-1683
	Journal and Correspondence of the	8	1775-1784
	State Council

Four of these sub-series have been completed. That is to say, the editors
have exhausted, or practically exhausted, the archival material for these sub-
series. (1) The Sharpe letterbooks, a mine of detail on administration of the
province during the years after mid-18th century, were a finite set and all have
been printed. They fill three full volumes of the Archives and part of a fourth,
which is primarily devoted to council proceedings. (2) The largest and, doubt-
less, the most important sub-series, Proceedings and Acts of the General As-
sembly, ran for thirty-two volumes, extending from the legislative session of
1637/38 to the last meeting of the provincial assembly in 1774 just before the
outbreak of the War for Independence. This series came to completion in
1947 with volume LXIV of the Archives. (3) A parallel set, the Proceedings
of the Governor and Council, similarly ran for eleven volumes and reproduced
material from the year 1636 to 1770. These two sets contain the bulk of