viii INTRODUCTION

Since 1536, the bishop had been denied the power to appoint judicial and
other officers, and could no longer grant pardons; writs no longer ran in his
name, but ran in the name of the king; and offenses in the palatinate there-
after violated the peace, not of the bishop, but of the king.¹ But that
abridgment was not to affect the privileges of Lord Baltimore in his distant
domain. All these incidents of power were to be his. He was to be lord
as of old, and throughout his dominion the internal administration of the
province did in fact rest with him and his people to an unexampled degree,
the control of the home government being confined almost entirely to the
regulation of the commerce and external relations of the colony.² Natu-
rally, however, the political organism, once it was successfully planted, de-
veloped in a way of its own; and it was a way that ultimately led far from
the conditions designed in Lord Baltimore's grant.

The distribution of the land, a subject of foremost importance during
the early history of an agricultural colony, and one with which the pro-
ceedings here recorded have much concern, was put at the disposal of the
proprietary, who was empowered to distribute it in such estates as he might
think proper and to erect manors with manorial courts and view of frank-
pledge. The operation of the statute quia emptores,³ which prohibited sub-
infeudation, and under which Maryland tenants would have held directly of
the crown, and their lands escheated to the crown, was as to all lands in
the province suspended. Lord Baltimore and his successors were specifi-
cally empowered to provide such laws and such judges, magistrates, judicial
tribunals, forms, and modes of proceeding as they might see fit, subject,
however, to the requirement that the laws be consonant to reason and not
repugnant or contrary, but (so far as conveniently might be) agreeable
to the laws, statutes, customs, and rights of the kingdom of England. An-
other and more important qualification was in a provision that the freemen
of the province, or the greater part of them, or their delegates or deputies,
were to be called together for the framing of the laws, when and as often
as need should require.

2. THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE LANDS

So long as it was necessary to offer inducements for settlers, the lands
were distributed in amounts varying with the number of those brought over
by the grantees; and as, at first, wheat was expected to be the staple product
of the settlement, an annual rent in wheat, payable to the proprietary, was
fixed and collected for each holding.⁴ The terms and conditions were

1 Lapsley, op. cil., p. 197.

² McMahon, op. cil., p. 231.
s 18 Edw. I, ch. i (1290).

* John Kilty, The Landholder's Assistant (Baltimore, 1808), pp. 29 et seq.; and see post,
PP- 543. 592-