HELMS v. FRANCISCUS. 567

of this court, has been placed beyond all further question, by an
act of assembly, which declares, 'that the Chancellor shall and

of the said Thomas Macnamara towards his wife, manifested not only to the Chan-
cellor, but to all Her Majesty's council in assembly, before whom appeared, not
long since, the said Margaret, so battered, bruised, and inhumanly beaten in most
parts of her body, that had she not been of a constitution more than ordinarily strong,
she could hardly have recovered it: and finding by daily expressions the said
Thomas to be of a mad, turbulent, furious, and ungovernable temper; therefore, for
the preservation of the poor petitioner's life,

It is Ordered, that during the time the said Thomas and Margaret shall continue
separate, and until they shall mutually reconcile themselves to each other, and
cohabit, he, the said Thomas, shall allow and pay to the said Margaret his wife,
£ 15 sterling per annum, by quarterly, or at least by half-yearly payments, to com-
mence from the sixteenth day of October. And it is further Ordered, that he forth-
with deliver unto her the wearing clothes and other small necessaries to her belong-
ing, herein particularly specified, viz: one gown, &c. &c. Ordered, likewise, that
the aforesaid order be served immediately by the sheriff of Anne Arundel county
upon the said Thomas, and that the said sheriff make return thereof.

From this order the said Thomas prayed an appeal to His Grace the Lord Arch-
bishop of Canterbury in the Arches j and that he might have a copy of the aforesaid
order to transmit to England.

16th October,1707.—SEYMOUR, Chancellor.—Let the appeal be granted, as prayed;
the said defendant performing, notwithstanding, the said order in all respects until
such time as His Grace's answer to the appeal be had; whereof the defendant is to
take notice at his peril.

On the 18th of October, 1707, the sheriff made return, that he had served the
order on Thomas Macnamara, who said that he would not obey it, neither could the
law or any one oblige him to it. Upon which, an attachment was issued, and after
some efforts to oppose or evade the process, he was taken into custody, and brought
before the court, and submitted to obey the order.—Chancery Proceedings, lib. P. C.
fol. 579.

This appears to have been the first suit of the kind here, in Chancery, by a wife
against her husband for alimony; of which it had been previously determined, that
the county courts had no jurisdiction.—4 H. & McH. 477. It appears by the pre-
amble of the act of 1718, ch. 16, (Parks' Laws of Maryland,) that this Thomas
Macnamara, who had come into the province as an Irish papist, and afterwards
declared himself to be of the church of England, was a practitioner of the law in
several of the courts of the province, and had been sundry times suspended here,
and in the province of Pennsylvania, for his misdeeds, and re-admitted here on his
fair promises of amendment, under the authority of the act of 1715, ch. 48, s. 12.
But having then on a late suspension from his practice, (for a full account of the very
grossly offensive causes of which, see Chancery Proceedings, lib. P. L. fol. 397,
413,) obtained Queen Anne's order to be restored to it; and relying upon that royal
order, as exempting him from the operation of the act of 1715, had treated the courts
in the most indecent manner, despised their authority, and affronted their persons,
which they had been cautious in punishing him for; being partly deterred by his
great interest in England, and partly by his threatening, litigious, and revengeful
temper, as well as his method of practising upon many unthinking people, to sur-