52 HIS LORDSHIP'S PATRONAGE

the Assize Courts, one for each shore, in October, 1723. ³ There
was also a clerk for each county court.

Outside the central governing body appeared a Clerk of the
Paper Currency Office (1734), in the provincial revenue system,
and two clerks on the proprietary finance establishment, namely
a Register of the Land Office (1680) and a Clerk of the Board
of Revenue (1768). Of these we shall have more to say in later
chapters.

Most clerks employed from time to time one or more clerks
assistant, or deputies, who served for small salaries or for a share
of the profits.

1. PROVINCIAL CLERKS.

We shall find it convenient to consider separately the revenues
of the Clerk of the Council and of the Clerk of the Upper House
although after 1678 both positions were filled by the same persons.
The Clerk of the Council was chosen by the Governor and
Council and appointed by the Governor. He had certain fees from
an early period and, after the establishment of royal government,
he acquired also a salary and other allowances. His fees, origin-
ally fixed by the Council on Feb. 9, 1679/80, were expanded and
raised in subsequent orders, being codified at length by the Council
in 1692 and by an act of Assembly in July, 1696. ⁴ Under the
general fee law of June, 1719, they were reduced to about three
fourths of their former value, and further reductions were accom-
plished by the Inspection Act of 1747.

Although his fees were paid willingly, his salary occasioned
serious controversies in Assembly. This salary, inaugurated in
1693, was at first 12, 000 pounds of tobacco a year, or about £ 50
sterling, out of the public levy; but it was reduced twenty percent,
without much altering its sterling value, in the Inspection Law
of 1747. ⁵ However the Lower House now refused to allow his

³ Thomas Jones was appointed Clerk of the High Court of Appeals, July 16,
1707. Henry Denton, first Register of the Admiralty Court, was appointed July
28, 1694. From Feb., 1694/5, to Oct. 21, 1698, there was a Register for each
shore but thereafter only one for both shores. Two Clerks of Assize were appointed
in April, 1708, but as the Lower House refused to provide for their payment,
Assize Courts were abandoned until reestablished by a law of Oct., 1723.

⁴ On the evolution of these fees see Ibid,, XV, 268; VII, 243; XVII, 190, 259;
VIII, 396; XX, 32; XXXVIII, 83. See also the "Additionall Articles...
against the Lord Baltemore and his Deputies, " 1690 (Ibid., VIII, 219).

⁵ Ibid., XX, 32, 228; XXIII, 270; XXV, 320; XLIV, 635. The Inspection
Law of 1747, which reduced fees and salaries in tobacco, raised the money value
of that commodity.