CHAPTER XIV

LEISURELY WAYS OF THE COLONIAL COURT

AN INTERESTING illustration of the leisurely ways of the Colonial gentry of Maryland and Virginia appears in the early proceedings of the Provincial Court, when a christening party at home is the sole apology for delaying the prosecution of a criminal until the next court.

Mr. John Washington, of Westmoreland County, Virginia, on September 30, 1659, writes thus to Governor Josias Fendall.

"Honnble Sir Yours of the 29th instant this day I received. I am sorry, yet my extraordinary occasions will not premit me to be at ye next Provincial Court to be held in Maryland ye 4 of this next month. Because then, God willing, I intend to git my young sonne baptized, all ye company and gossips being all ready invited."

It appears from the records that Mr. John Washington accused one Edward Prescott of hanging a witch on board his ship enroute from England the year previous and consequently the following letter had been sent by Governor Fendall:

Mr. Washington: Upon your complaint to me that Mr. Prescott did in his voyage from England hither cause a woman to bee executed for a witch, I have caused him to bee apprehended upon suspition of felony and doe intend to bind him over to ye Provincial Court to answere it, where I doe allso expect you to make good your charge.

"He will be called upon his trial ye 4th or 5th of October next att ye Court to bee held then att Patuxent, neare Mrs. Fenwick's

house, where I suppose you will not fayle to bee. Witnesses examined in Virginia will be of no vallew there in this case, for they must bee face to face with ye party accused, or they stand for nothing. I thought good to acquaynt you with this that you may not come unprovided. This at present, Sr, is all, from your friend.

29th September.

JOSIAS FENDALL.

Washington's delightful excuse to the Governor of Maryland for deferring the case until next court speaks volumes for the social conditions of that day, and throws a particularly amusing ray of light upon the attitude of his mind toward the Colonial dames in 1659.

Here the Governor of the Province of Maryland is politely, but none the less emphatically, told that the court must wait upon the pleasure of Mr. Washington! The judges must doff their wigs and gowns, while the "young sonne" donned his christening robe! "The gossips" (in the modern sense sponsors) were more to be feared than the Provincial Court judges, and well they might be, for they made no little trouble in the early days, before the era of women's clubs and the strenuous intellectual life. An instance in point is the trial of one Mrs. Blank at a court holden for the Province of Maryland October 16, 1654, at which one witness testified that he heard Mrs. Blank relate that she heard Mrs. G. had beaten her maid two hours, by the clock, and there were those that would take their oath it was an hour and a half by the clock. As the witnesses advanced the length of the time of the beating grew to two hours and a half, and the climax was reached when an enthusiastic young maid of 20 summers declared that Mrs. G.'s irate husband "tore the hair of his head and wisht that she (his wife)

would kill the self same maid that she might never kill more."

As all these testimonies proved to be unsupported by satisfactory evidence the gossip, Mrs. Blank, was made to pay the charges.

Of course it is not to be supposed that such offensive persons were referred to by the ancestor of the Father of His Country when he made his excuses for not attending court because of "ye company and gossips being already invited"-"gossips" was simply the ancient name for sponsors.

The name of the ship of which Edward Prescott was captain, and on which Colonel John Washington evidently came to Virginia was The Sarah Artch as written in an old record in Northampton County, Virginia. The correct name was most likely the Arch Sarah!

CHAPTER XV

THE PURITANS FROM VIRGINIA

THE coming of the persecuted Puritans from Virginia to Maryland in the year 1649-50 brought to the Province a band of high-principled and intelligent men of the ruling class, which any community suffered in losing and whose arrival in Maryland was but another contribution to her population of men whose actions were governed by principles rather than self-seeking.

The persecution of the Puritans in England naturally extended to her Royal Colony of Virginia, whose government was subject to the King and whose Governor and Council were by royal favor.

In Maryland all was different, and Lord Baltimore secure in his chartered rights, dared open wide the doors of his little kingdom to all whom the royal mandates oppressed. Hence, when the nonconformists were driven from Virginia, they came in a large body to the only spot on the earth where the principle of "Live and let live" was the law of the land.

The Puritans settled at Providence, now Annapolis, where they laid out a town and sold lots. Among those were Richard Bennett, afterward Governor of Virginia; Edward Lloyd, Richard Preston, William Berry, William Burgess and others. All were men of ability and have left their impress upon the early history of Maryland.

The young King Charles II, though an exile, resented the action of Lord Baltimore in receiving all kinds of

"sectaries and schismatics into that plantation." The uncrowned king was as apparently ignorant of Maryland's chartered rights as some of his subjects were of Virginia's annulled charter. Lord Baltimore was never pronounced disloyal by King Charles I for inviting to his palatinate, where he alone was sovereign, all who were driven from England or elsewhere for conscience' sake.

But deprived of his power at home the exiled King thought to punish Lord Baltimore by sending a royal governor to Maryland. Hence, according to Langford in June, 1650, while at Breda, Charles II issued a royal commission to Sir William Davenant as Governor of Maryland.

Certain it is that neither he nor his commission ever reached Maryland, while, on the contrary, the Parliament sent Richard Bennett and William Claiborne to reduce both Maryland and Virginia to submission. The story of their success is well known. Hence we will take a brief glance at Sir William Davenant, who was chosen for the first royal Governor of the Province. As the godson and pet of William Shakespeare, the King's choice was a compliment to the intellectual appreciation of his Maryland subjects. "This young Will Davenant, born 1606, our proposed Governor," says Bozman, “when a little schoolboy at about seven or eight years old in the town of Oxford, was so fond of Shakespeare that whenever he heard of his arrival he would fly from school to see him." The Bard of Avon stopped at the Crown Inn tavern, kept by Davenant's father.

From this patronage of Shakespeare, without doubt originated Davenant's interest in these matters, and after