ixxiv Introduction.

APPENDIX

In the Appendix will be found printed not only a number of contemporary
documents having a direct bearing upon matters before the Assembly in the
1758-1761 period, but some important correspondence of Governor Sharpe,
which was apparently unavailable, or overlooked, when the Sharpe Corre-
spondence was printed a number of years ago (Arch. Md. VI, IX, XIV,
XXXI).

Much of this hitherto unpublished material which has a direct bearing upon
the Assembly proceedings is in the form of petitions addressed to the Governor
and both houses requesting legislative relief. A few of these are undated, but
appear to be of this period. A bill to divide All Saints' Parish, Frederick
County, passed by the Upper House at the March-April 1760 session and
rejected in the Lower House, will be found printed on pages 501-502.
There is an undated petition, also presented at this session, requesting the
passage of an act to tax the inhabitants of this same parish for the repair of
the parish church and two chapels of ease (pp. 502-504). There are two un-
dated petitions relating to Prince George's Parish, lying in Frederick, one
requesting the passage of an act for its division into two parishes (pp. 504-506)
and another presented at the March-April 1760 session, for the erection of a
chapel of ease on Hawliugs River, a branch of the Patuxent (pp. 506-508).
The petition, presented at the April-May, 1761, session, asking for an act to
validate the proceedings of a meeting of the vestry of St. Stephen's Parish,
Cecil County, is printed on page 508.

Six petitions from sundry languishing prisoners for debt in county jails
are printed in the Appendix (pp. 509-514). Although the legal phraseology
is similar in all, there is variation in the human interest in each of these
cases which makes them worth reproducing. Earlier Assembly proceedings
show that four of these petitioners were in prison and had petitioned for relief
in 1757 (Arch. Md. LV, 169). The petitions now printed reveal that some
of these unfortunates had been prisoners for debt for as long as four years.
Each petitioner expressed willingness to give up everything he possessed to
help pay his debts, which he could not do in full as long as he was kept in
prison. One even expressed a willingness to indenture himself as a servant to
pay his creditors. Some had helpless families dependent upon them. The ulti-
mate fate of these wretched debtors is only known in the case of a certain
John Turnbull in prison in 1757, who was not released until legislative relief
was secured in 1765. Some of the others may have been released by creditors
who had relented. Some doubtless died in prison. In the past it had been
customary for the Assembly at frequent intervals to pass acts releasing certain
specified "languishing prisoners" for debt. Since the session of May 1757,
when such an act was last passed, no relief had been granted because the
Upper House was unwilling to relieve debtors to the Lord Proprietary, who
the other chamber insisted should be included in the act (pp. 62, 123). Nor
was relief again granted to debtors by legislative action until 1765.

The bill authorizing the publication of Bacon's Collection of Laws, discussed
at length in a preceding section (pp. ixxi-lxxiii), was passed on October 15,