12 court of appeals of maryland

and Justices of the Peace and Judges of the
Quorum", as they were called, was much prized,
and most of the justices attended in the counties
although no adequate money compensation was
paid them for it. Justices to travel to Annapolis
to sit on the Provincial Court were not so easily
obtained,²⁴ and for a while there was a falling off
in the quality of the court. It was, however, held
relatively the most important court, and during
the greater part of its career outstanding names of
provincial history are found at the head of the
records of its sessions.

The country gentlemen were thus largely de-
pended upon in England, in provincial Maryland
they were entirely depended upon for presiding
judges. It was of course impossible to have itin-
erant professional judges from Westminster come
to sit here on circuit, according to the practice in
England,²⁵ and the amount of judicial business
seemed too small to justify maintaining local pro-
fessional lawyers on the bench. Therefore,
throughout the provincial period the courts were
all regularly presided over by non-professional
judges. This does not mean that the province had
for its judges men entirely incapable of passing
upon questions of law which came before them.
In the first place, laymen though these men were,
many of them knew some law. It seems clear that
the leading men of the period did not abandon all
knowledge and judgment in the law to the pro-
fessional lawyers as laymen do in the more com-
plex modern world. They made an effort to equip

24. Mereness, 249, 253.

25. It was once suggested by way of a threat, Mereness, 236.