18 court of appeals of maryland

relevant. An informal proceeding was early devel-
oped for the settlement of controversies between
masters and servants, upon petition, apparently the
original of the proceeding on "petition for free-
dom" of servants and slaves, which furnished a
substantial part of the business of the courts in
Maryland during the eighteenth century, and in
the nineteenth, until it became obsolete with the
abolition of slavery.³⁵ In 1697/98, it became neces-
sary to protect that proceeding from attacks
grounded on its departure from procedural re-
quirements in England, attacks which may, per-
haps, signalize an increase in the number and in-
fluence of professional lawyers, natural grammar-
ians of the law. An act of assembly³⁶ of the time
recited that,

Whereas it hath been the common practice of this province
both in provincial and county courts to hear and determine the
complaints of masters and servants by way of petition, and that
whereas there hath been several appeals and writs of error
brought upon the said judgments and for want of due and
formal proceedings according to the strict rule of law the judg-
ments have been reversed, for prevention whereof Be it En-
acted by the King's Most Excellent Majesty by and with the
advice and consent of this present General Assembly that * * *
no such judgment shall be reversed for want of judicial process,
or that the same was not tried by jury or any matter of form
either in the entry or giving of judgment, provided it appears
by the record that the parties defendant were legally summoned
and not condemned unheard.

35. Evans, Maryland Practice (1839), 402n. The act of 1715, ch. 44,
has been referred to as the source of the petition for freedom,
(Peters v. Van Lear, 4 Gill, 249, 257), but the provision in that
act, section 31, is found to be a repetition of the act of 1697/8, no
copy of which was available in Maryland during the nineteenth
century.

36. Act 1697, c. 12, Archives, Acts of Assembly Hitherto Unprinted,
117.