INTRODUCTION xi

institutions of these people. All Maryland was divided into two parts by
Chesapeake Bay, and, as in the beginning, before the settlement of the
hinterland, the two parts are still called shores, the eastern shore and the
western shore; and institutions established or projected were often bi-
partite, until the year 1851, when under a new state constitution the Court
of Appeals ceased holding sessions on each shore independently. The ex-
traordinary number of rivers, creeks, and reaches, branching in turn into
a great number of navigable waterways, gave ready communication by water
to nearly all lands, for although the interior of the southern half of the prov-
ince had been occupied by the end of the seventeenth century, the popula-
tion was for the most part scattered along the shores; and consequently it
was largely water-borne.¹

As is well known, growing tobacco and shipping it to England became
the chief and all-absorbing occupation, and it was greatly facilitated by the
ready access of so large a part of the land to navigable water. Some of the
planters loaded cargoes at their own landings to be carried directly to
the London docks. Toward the end of the seventeenth century London mer-
chants commonly had factors in the province, but previously there had been
few of them, and long afterwards there were still direct dealings between
planters and English merchants. Voyages to the home country appear to
have been made by planters themselves with some frequency, although the
time taken was long, log books of late seventeenth-century voyages to and
from Chesapeake Bay showing from forty-seven to 138 days to have been
consumed on the westward crossing, thirty-two to 113 on the eastward; and
often ships touched at Barbadoes on the way.² Absences in Virginia appear
noted in the records frequently, and, in general, one of the sea changes no-
ticeable among these Englishmen was an increase of mobility, a fact re-
flected in the laws of the province. From an early date it was found neces-
sary to contrive some special security for creditors, and statutes required that
passes be obtained for departure of debtors from the province. The writ of
ne exeat provinciam was frequently issued pending the disposition of litiga-
tion, and attachments of goods of debtors beyond the reach of ordinary
process were relatively more numerous than in England.

But there are many reminders that the province was remote from the
home country. In a report of an appeal in a case of Clayland's Lessee v.
Pearce, decided in 1714," it is stated that a will of land executed within two
years after the passage of the Statute of Frauds was nevertheless made before
publication and notice of the statute in the province; and the opening of
the present record is dated in the reign of William and Mary five months

¹ C. P. Gould, " Money and Transportation in Maryland," Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies
in Hist, if Pol. Science, ser. 33, no. i.

² Henry F. Thompson, " An Atlantic Voyage in the Seventeenth Century," Maryland
Hist. Mag., II, 319.

s i Harris & McHenry, 29.