"gentlemen" were recorded as such. These were entitled to be addressed as esquire, and with their large landed estates corresponded to the gentry of England. All important officials, civil and military, were chosen by the Lord Baltimore from the privileged classes, who belonged to his own educated coterie, which was natural enough and not contrary to the present-day custom of political patronage.

CHAPTER XII

FIRST PRISON IN MARYLAND

MORE than once since the author began her original researches in which she has sought to banish some of the shadows cast upon the character of the early settlers of Maryland, has she found pleasant surprises in unfamiliar bypaths.

In looking for the much-talked-of "convicts" we have found the gallant cavalier and the lady of high degree, and while we have rejoiced within our souls to be able to approve what we had expected to deplore, there is yet another evidence of the superior character of the Maryland settlers before us, namely, the fact that the Province of Maryland existed twenty-eight years without a prison or jail within its jurisdiction.

Farewell forever, ye haunting shades of convicts, so nimbly conjured up through the haze of time by our imaginative neighbors!

Not until the year 1662 did the Assembly find it necessary to build its first prison, at the City of St. Mary's.

George Alsop, that talented young Londoner who came to Maryland in the years 1650 at the age of 20, served a four years' term of indenture to Mr. Thomas Stockett and wrote before 1662 "A Character of Maryland," printed in London in 1666, tells us that here "a man may walk in the open woods as secure from being externally dissected as in his own house. So hateful is a

Robber that if but once imagined to be so he's kept at a distance and shunned."

"Here," he continues, "the Constable hath no need of a train of Halberteers that carry more armour about them than heart to guard him.

"Heres no Newgates for pilfering Felons, nor Ludgates for Debtors, nor Bridewells to lash the soul into Repentance. For as there is none of these Prisons in Maryland so the merits of the country deserve none.

"Common ale houses. those schools which train up youth as well as Age to ruine, in this Province there are none!"

Surely, our earliest settlers must have been a remarkably superior class of people. Their laws are equitable and give evidence of broad-minded legislation. Their suits in court are civil, and the criminal class seems conspicuously absent in this province which bore the peaceful and suggestive name of "The Sanctuary."

As there were no prisons in the early days, if a convict was to be found in Maryland it must have been incognito. A province that could thrive for a term of twenty-eight years without a jail or prison house is unique in the history of colonization. Neither drunkenness, robbery or murder stained the fair record of our annals except in isolated and

rare cases.

But as the years passed and a greater influx of immigration came to our shores the "world, the flesh and the devil" became more in evidence, and in the year 1662 we find passed the following:

"A Council held at the Resurrection, 27th June, 1662. Present, Charles Calvert, Esq., Lieutenant-General of this Province; Phillip Calvert, Esq., Chancellor of said

Province; Henry Sewell, Esq., Secretary John Bateman, Baker Brookes, Esq., Councillors Ordered, that there bee a Pryson built, for the speedy effecting of which carpenters and other workmen to attend them be pressed, the charges to be defrayed accordinge to the law of England."

A little later an act of Assembly provided for a pillory, ducking stool, whipping post, stock and branding irons for each county.

Eleven years after this a prison was ordered to be built in every county in connection with local court-houses. We must judge from that that we grew in wickedness as we waxed in strength, which, while nothing to our credit or to that of the lawbreakers of olden times, it is distinctly a gratification to know that the firstcomers were true blue and set their followers a high standard of living.

If there is any dark spot of Maryland history which should be illumined with the searchlight of truth it is the stigma of her convict settlement, and never will it be dropped by local Marylanders whose lineages reach back into those first days until all who run may read that Maryland's provincial records prove her to have been the highest-toned colony in the known world. And that in this free and gracious place of refuge he who sought a "convict" found a rebel-not a felon, but a patriot, or, perchance, a Christian martyr.

CHAPTER XIII

THE LORDS AND LADIES OF THE MANORS

THAT Lords and Ladies of the Manor did actually form the center of a social aristocracy in Colonial Maryland is a matter of fact, rather than a dream of fiction, and no more charming retrospective glimpses can be taken through Colonial doorways than those which include these personages of high degree.

And that these Lords were of the genuine English brand, tricked out in gold-banded hats with waving plumes, silk and velvet coats and much curled wigs, knee breeches and long silk hose, the inventories of their personal estates leave no doubt.

That they wore lace ruffles over their well-kept hands, invariably adorned with "the seale gold ring" which was a part of every gentleman's possessions, we also have reason to believe. These seal gold rings were important to their owners, of course, but to the modern student of family history they have a value entirely separate from their official worth on a property deed.

The impression of an old seal may mean the key to open the most charming vistas in which Old World castles and Norman knights may form the central group. Fortunately, many of these have survived the ravages of time, and as it was a criminal offense to use a crest or coat of arms not authorized by the Crown, we may be sure that they were hereditably used by our Colonial