xxxiv       Early Maryland County Courts.

          tress, extends over a period of four years, 1659 to 1662, fills many pages of
          the record, and is worth the reading as the narrative of the efforts of a desperate
          woman to escape from the toils of fate. Frequent floggings and runaways,
          concealment by kind-hearted neighbors, starvation in the forest, damage suits
          by the master against sympathetic planters' wives for harboring her as a run
          away, the theft of her master's goods to aid escape, and her arrest and trial,
          and finally the grant of freedom by an outraged court, are high spots in Sarah's
          career. But she was not the only sufferer, for a special commission appointed
          by Gov. Fendall decided that the Kent court had gone beyond its powers, and
          ordered that each of the justices who had voted to free her, pay damages of
          200 pounds of tobacco to Mrs. Bradnox for the loss of her servant, but f or
          tunately did not order the return of Sarah to the Bradnox household (Arch. Md.
          pp. xxi-xxii; liv, 167-169, 171, 178-180, 213, 225, 234). The county court
          should probably have sold her to the highest bidder for her unexpired term of
          service, and have then reimbursed her master by this amount, and not have
          granted her unqualified freedom.
            What seems to amount to a successful claim as to the validity of a common-
          law marriage is involved in the case of Giles Tompkinson of Charles County
          when he and his “wife” were brought before the Charles County Court, No
          vember 14, 1665, charged with bastardy. Tompkinson pleaded that at the time
          there was no Protestant minister in the Province, and he being a “lawfull
          churchman” they had been legally married by “consent and publication” of
          their intentions (p. While the judgement of the court is not recorded;
          that no further action was taken against the couple suggests that a marriage
          was recognized. Francis Doughtie, apparently the only minister in Charles
          County about this time, is known to have left there and gone to Virginia a
          year or two earlier.
            Divorce, or what seems to have been a legal separation, was obtainable in
          Maryland during the middle of the seventeenth century upon both parties appear
          ing in court and agreeing upon terms of separation satisfactory to the court
          and to themselves. On June 4, 1658, Robert Robbins, a somewhat sordid
          character as later events proved, appeared before the Charles County Court and
          charged his wife Elizabeth with adultery, but he could not substantiate his
          charges and was ordered by the court to take back his wife and children and
          support them (pp. 4, 250). A year later, June 18, 1659, husband and wife
          appeared in the Charles County Court before Gov. Fendall and John Hatch,
          the latter a member of the Governor's Council as well as of the Charles County
          Court, and George Thompson the clerk, and made a declaration disclaiming
          each other forever as man and wife, which was ordered to be formally recorded
          (pp. 33-34). A similar case had come up in the Provincial Court in 1656, when
          a couple had appeared before the presiding justice and another member of that
          court, and recorded a similar agreement disclaiming each other, the husband
          making a financial settlement upon the wife, and she agreeing to make no
          future demands upon him for support (Arch. Md. x, 471). It does not seem
          probable that such a separation permitted remarriage in either instance, but
          nothing as to this appears on the records. Perhaps of somewhat similar sig