INTRODUCTION xiii

the jurisdictions of courts of smaller divisions. There was one central trial
court throughout the provincial pciiud, and its work was distributed to some
extent among assize courts in the early eighteenth century. A chancery
court, a court of vice-admiralty, and a prerogative court were added, as will
be described more at length. Over all, as a reviewing body, was the court of
the assembly held by the governor and council, the Court of Appeals here
seen at work. There are records available to illustrate the organizations and
proceedings of all these except the hundred courts. One record of a mano-
rial court is known to have survived, that of St. Clement's manor for the years
from 1659 to 1672, and it has been reproduced.¹ The records of the St.
Mary's county court were destroyed by fire in 1831, and the earliest county
court record surviving now is one of Kent County, beginning with the year
1655. It is being reproduced by the Maryland Historical Society. The series
in the respective counties are not unbroken, large gaps appear in the lists, but
there are many volumes, probably sufficient in number to afford a fairly
full comprehension of the work of those jurisdictions. The general trial
court, the provincial court, left a series almost complete from i6g7.² Pro-
ceedings on writs of error for review by the governor and council before
1695 are to be found scattered through the records of the provincial and
chancery courts and those of the administrative and legislative sessions of
the council.³ The first separate record of final appellate proceedings, begun
on the revival and organization of the jurisdiction in 1694 and 1695, is the
present one. It is the only one except for a desultory record of a few scat-
tered cases, unpublished, kept between 1749 and 1755 by Michael Macne-
mara, clerk at that time.

The minor courts of the hundred and the manor seem to have yielded
to the county courts shortly after the middle of the seventeenth century,
and little is known of them. Surviving commissions show that a justice of
the peace presided over each hundred court, with a constable under him
charged with the duties of both constable and coroner.* The character and
extent of jurisdiction entrusted to these courts were not the same in all in-
stances; the organization was used as occasion arose in each district, game
preservation, defense against Indians, and other local objects being men-
tioned in one commission or another. Little is known of the manorial
courts, except that they were maintained, and that in the manor of St. Clem-
ents the court was concerned with the duties and small police regulations of
tenants on " the Lord's manor." ^B

1 J. H. Johnson, " Old Maryland Manors," Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies in Hist. & Pol.
Science, ser. I, no. 7, 31. Bozman [op. cil., II, 581] appears to have had before him a record
of the court baron of a St. Gabriel's Manor, but it has not been found in later years.

2 Thirteen folio records of its proceedings in the seventeenth century survive, one covers
the years 1699 to 1701, and sixty-one cover the years of the eighteenth century to 1776, — seventy-
five in all.

3 Archives, XLIX, 552, 556; ibid., Ill, 122, 521.

* Ibid., Ill, 70, 89. ⁶ J. H. Johnson, op. cil., p. 31.