412 McKIM v. ODOM.—3 BLAND.

So far as I have been able to ascertain, this is the first instance
of an application to this Court for coercive process against a body
politic. Corporations have latterly become very numerous; and
new ones are created at almost every session of the Legislature;
the matter now submitted for determination, therefore, has an im-
portance much above the interests of the case out of which it
arises, and requires to be carefully considered with a view to the
course of proceeding in future.

Under the Provincial Government, corporations were framed and
called into existence, as in England, either directly by or with the
immediate sanction of the Lord Proprietary or the monarch. 1
Blac. Com. 472; The Case of Sutton's Hospital, 10 Co. 23. (e)

(e) CECILIUS, absolute Lord and Proprietary of the Provinces of Maryland
and Avalon, Lord Baron of Baltimore, &c. To all our officers and inhabi-
tants of our said Province of Maryland, and to all others whom these
presents may concern, sendeth greeting, in our Lord God everlasting.
Know ye, that whereas by our letters patent, under our great seal, bearing
date the third day of November, in the seven and thirtieth year of our
Dominion, Annoque Domini one thousand six hundred and sixty seven; we
did grant to our well-beloved inhabitants within the city called or known
by the name of St. Mary's City, in the County of St. Mary's, in the said
Province of Maryland, and the circuits, precincts and privileged places of
the said city, not exceeding the space of one English mile square, that they
the said inhabitants, within the said city, circuits, and precincts aforesaid,
shall be an incorporated city of one Mayor, one person learned in the law,
by the name of recorder, and six aldermen, and ten persons as common
councilmen, inhabiting within the said city, for evermore. And that the
said Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen and Common Councilmen. shall be a body
corporate and one community forever, in right and in name; and shall be,
by the name of Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen and Common Council of the
City of St. Mary's City, able and capable at law to be sued and to sue; and
to act. execute, and do as a body incorporate; and to have succession for-
ever; and to that end to have a common seal; and that Philip Calvert, Es-
quire, one of the inhabitants of the said city, shall, for the present, be and
be named Mayor of the said city, for the ensuing year, and John Morecroft
recorder of the same, and William Calvert, Esquire, Jerome White, Esquire,
Daniel Jenifer, Garrett Vanswearingen, Mark Cosden, and Thomas Cosden,
inhabitants also of the said city, shall be aldermen thereof as long as they
shall well behave themselves therein, having first taken the oath of fidelity,
as also the oath appointed by us to be taken by the Mayor, Aldermen and
Recorder of the City of St. Mary's City; and to be administered unto them
respectively by our lieutenant of the said Province, for the time being; or
by such person or persons as we, or our heirs, or our lieutenant of the said
Province, for the time being, shall from time to time authorize and appoint
to administer the same. And the said Mayor, Recorder and Aldei men, or
the major part of them, shall elect and chuse ten others of the most suffi-
cient inhabitants of the said city to be of the common council thereof, for
BO long time as they shall well behave themselves.—Chancery Proceedings,
lib. C. D. fol. 54.—This body politic has long since been dissolved by desue-
tude.

Some time after the City of St. Mary's had been thus incorporated, Ann,
Queen of England, who then held the government of the Province of Mary-