CHAPTER TWO

William Bladen, "Publisher, and his Printer, Thomas Reading—

The Bray Sermon of Annapolis, 1700—
The Body of Laws of 1700

IN SUCH of the northern colonies as had printing presses
available during the closing years of the seventeenth cen-
tury, there were printed with fair regularity the annual
session laws of the assemblies, and, occasionally, bodies
of compiled laws. Nothing of this sort, however, seems
even to have been contemplated in Maryland until the
year 1695, when, doubtless on the initiative of the new

governor, Francis Nicholson, zealous always in intellectual and educational

matters, the Upper House proposed to the delegates,

"That when the house have compiled such a Body of Laws as they think may be the
Standing body of Laws of the Province that they then imploy Some able Lawyer in Eng-
land to digest them and put them into better Language, and So have them returned in
again for perusall and approbation of the whole Assembly & afterwards to Send them back
in Ordr to procure the Royall Assent to the Same and have them printed."¹

At this time in the colony the only form in which the body of law existed
was in the several collections of manuscript session laws in the possession
of the counties and the government. The disadvantages to court and people
of this arrangement were perfectly understood by everyone, but for some
reason no action was taken by the Lower House on the remedial suggestion
proposed by the upper chamber, and again, in May 1697, their Honors re-
turned to the matter with a recommendation "That a former proposall about
haveing the lawes digested into better Language by some able Lawyer in
England be considered anew and is again recommended from the board."²
This time the Lower House took formal action by referring the matter to a
standing committee,⁸ but as nothing was heard of it afterwards, it may be
assumed that the committee buried the proposal deep beneath its accumu-
lation of business.

¹U. H. J., October 15, 1695, Archives of Maryland, 19: 231.

²U. H. J., May 28, 1697, Archives of Maryland, 19: 511.

³U. H. J., May 31, 1697, Archives of Maryland, 19: 517.

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