xii Introduction.

the first rate evidence on the politics and constitutional development of Maryland
during the proprietary period. Without these two sub-series historians would
be in poor case for writing our colonial political history. Their completion was a
milestone in the collection and presentation of materials on colonial Maryland.
(4) Finally, the smallest of the sub-series, the Muster Rolls, required only a
single volume.

The two other sub-series were open-ended, each with considerable archival
material yet to be edited and printed. Both presented some problems which
called for careful consideration when the future of the Archives came under
discussion.

Eldest of the two, the Court Series began in 1887 as Volume IV of the
Archives with the Proceedings of the Provincial Court, 1637-1650. Three
additional volumes (Archives X, XLI, and XLIX) had appeared at varying
intervals by 1932, bringing the provincial court proceedings down to 1666.
Thus far the Court Series had contained materials from a single archival source.
Thereafter the editors began introducing other materials that gave the series
its miscellaneous character. The fifth volume of the Court Series (Volume LI
of the Archives) reprinted the Chancery Court Proceedings for the years
1668/69-1679. The sixth volume (Volume LIII of the Archives) contained
proceedings of the Charles County Court, 1658-1666, and the unique court
leet and court baron of St. Clements Manor. In the seventh volume (Vol-
ume LIV of the Archives) the editors introduced proceedings nf three new

county courts—Kent, 1648-1676; Talbot, 1662-1674; and Somerset, 1665-
1668. Then followed an eighth volume (LVII of the Archives), which returned
to the proceedings of the provincial court, 1666-1670, and a ninth (Archives,
LX) which picked up the Charles County court proceedings in 1666 and brought
the record down to 1674.

After this season of experimentation the editors in 1952 returned for good
and all to the provincial court proceedings. The tenth to fifteenth volumes
of the Court Series take the record from 1671 to 1683.

The fifteen volumes of the Court Series print an uncommonly wide spectrum
of proceedings for students of our early law. First to last some eleven types
of courts of record flourished in colonial Maryland. Substantial samples of pro-
ceedings from five of these appear in the Archives: the provincial court, various
county courts, the chancery court, and the courts leet and baron. Maryland,
then, is the best represented of any American colony by legal materials in letter
press editions, if one includes two additional volumes in the American Legal
Records: Carroll T. Bond (ed.), Proceedings of the Maryland Court of Ap-
peals, 1695-1729 (Washington, 1933) and Joseph H. Smith and Philip A.
Crowl (eds.), Court Records of Prince George's County Court (Washington,
1964).

The chief problem of this series can be stated by the question: where does it
go from here? The bulk of court proceedings is mountainous. Proceedings of
the provincial court alone would, by conservative estimation, run to more than
eighty volumes of the Archives. Besides these the collection of county court

proceedings contains perhape triple this bulk. In approximate figures, these