INTRODUCTION xiii

were frequently bound out as apprentices not only as a means of learning a trade
but also as a means of providing for paupers, orphans and illegitimate offspring.17

The total number of white servants in Maryland during the years 1696-99 is
unknown but it probably was in the neighborhood of 2,500. Available statistics
show almost 1,700 imported into the province in the period 1696-98. Various
efforts were made to improve the caliber of imports by prohibiting the importation
of convicts and by placing a high duty on "Irish papists." Neither restriction ap-
pears to have had any noticeable effect. The prohibition on convicts was contrary
to English policy and ships' masters continued to bring in Irish Catholics despite
the duty. 18

The law in Maryland regulating white servants and governing master-servant
relationships was extensive and detailed. A substantial portion of the business of
the county courts in Prince Georges County and elsewhere was concerned with
various aspects of such regulation and government.

In Maryland, as in neighboring Virginia, tobacco was almost the only staple
commodity—"our meat, drinks cloathing and monies"—and the greater part of
the cultivated soil was devoted to its growth. While by the end of the century some
foodstuffs were being raised, chiefly Indian corn or maize and wheat, and, to some
extent, being exported to other colonies, the amount barely exceeded the needs
of the colony. If the crops were poor, exportation of foodstuffs might be pro-
hibited.19 Tobacco was king and for better or worse the great majority of the
planters were its subjects. In spite of the difficulties inherent in tobacco culture,
in spite of "over production" and in spite of wide and sometimes ruinous fluctua-
tions in price, it was a cash crop. It was the only product indigenous to the colony,
with the possible exceptions of naval stores and furs, which was marketable in
the mother country. Hence the planters in the late seventeenth century saw no
alternative but to continue to raise it even in the face of low and fluctuating prices,
higher duties and rising freight costs and exhaustion of the soil. Several severe
winters in the 1690's spoiled tobacco crops, turned planters to more extensive
cultivation of food for their cattle, and interfered with the scheduled sailings of
the "tobacco fleet." 20

The available figures indicate that the amount of tobacco exported from Mary-
land during the period from 1689 to 1715 remained stable, although the number
of planters increased. The prices received in the colony by the Maryland planter
for his tobacco during this same period, generally regarded as low, fluctuated
within rather narrow limits, for 1697-1700 ranging from l 1/2d. to 2d. per pound.
No comparable figures are available for prices of tobacco sold in England by
Maryland planters during this period. 21

Tobacco was not only a marketable commodity. Although a clumsy medium of
exchange, it also served as the chief currency of the plantation in the absence of
any significant quantity of specie in circulation. 22 The records here published
indicate it was receivable by law for all taxes and assessments, including fines im-

17. McCormac, White Servitude in Maryland, 1634-1820, JHUS, Series XXII, Nos. 3-4 (1904)
c. IV; Smith, Colonists in Bondage, White Servitude and Convict Labor in America, 1607-1772
(1947) (those portions relating to Maryland c. 1690-1700); Morris, Government and Labor in
Early America (1946) (those portions relating to Maryland c. 1690-1700).

18. Morriss,op. cit. supra, 77-78.

19. Id. 15-17, 24-25; 20 MA 503; 22 id. 85.

20. 19 id. 580; Wyckoff, Ships and Shipping of Seventeenth Century Maryland, 34 MHM 270,
275 (1939).

21. Morriss, op. cit. supra, 36-38.

22. Id. 28-29.