INTRODUCTION vii

Council. The organization of the jurisdiction in 1694 appears to have been
a revival.

This record will be seen to include full transcriptions of proceedings in
the courts from which the cases were removed for review, together with
narrations of proceedings in the reviewing court; and it contains a few
records of decisions of the Privy Council in England as the final tribunal at
home. In addition, there are notes of admissions of attorneys to practice
before this court; votes of judges are recorded in some instances; and a
few remarks from the bench are preserved. The book is not, however, a law
report, of the nature of those that form so large a part of the equipment of
modern lawyers in English-speaking countries, and it cannot serve the pur-
poses of a report, for often the grounds of decision are not made known.
The practice of delivering explanatory opinions or judgments had not
yet come into being.¹ Eight of the cases in this book were reported by the
first reporters of Maryland decisions,² but the arguments and explanations
needed for the reporting were gleaned from notebooks left by attorneys
who took part in the litigation.⁸

i. THE PROVINCIAL CHARTER

It was the obvious design of the charter granted to Lord Baltimore to
erect in the province another great franchise, with the large measure of
autonomy vested in the county palatine of Durham before 1536, when, by
act of parliament, the ancient privileges of the bishop had been abridged.⁴
Such was the grant:

All, and singular such, and as ample Rights, Jurisdictions, Privileges, Preroga-
tives, Royalties, Immunities, and royal Rights, and temporal Franchises whatso-
ever, as well by Sea as by Land ... to be had, exercised, used, and enjoyed, as any
Bishop of Durham, within the Bishoprick or County Palatine of Durham, in our
Kingdom of England, ever heretofore hath had, held, used, or enjoyed, or of Right
could, or ought to have, hold, use, or enjoy.⁵

thereafter, described the court as " in the Council Chamber," as did the old form of writ in
parliament: in camera consilii vocata le council chamber. Placita Lating Rediviva (1661), p. 314.

1 Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 71; Law Quarterly Review, XLIII, 482; Jones v. Roe, 3
Burn. & East (1789), 96.

2 Hicks v. Lecompt, or Seward, post, p. 449, i Harris & McHenry, 22; Digges' Lessee v.
Beale, post, p. 583, ibid., pp. 26 and 67; Gresham v. Gassaway, post, p. 384, ibid., 34; His Lord-
ship v. Cockshutt, post, p. 288, ibid., p. 40; Bush v. Robins' Lessee, post, p. 410, ibid., p. 50; Car-
roll v. Tyler's Lessee, post, p. 549, ibid., p. 78; Lloyd v. Robinson, post, p. 621, ibid., p. 78;
Bryon v. Smallwood, post, p. 538; 4 H. & McH., 483. Thomas Harris and John McHenry pub-
lished in 1809 a collection of cases in the provincial court and the court of chancery prior to 1776,
and noted the results of appeals to the governor and council. Reports of additional cases of that
period were appended by them to their fourth volume (1818) .

s i Harris & McHenry, 59, 63.

* Lapsley, op. cil., p. 196.

⁵ John Leeds Bozman, History of Maryland (Baltimore, 1837) , II, 9; T. Bacon, editor,
Laws of Maryland at Large (Annapolis, 1765) , Preface.