About two-thirds of this work is devoted to a history of the land administered by colonial Maryland, with a detailed inventory of Patents, Warrants, Proprietary Leases, Rent Rolls, Debt Books, etc. The remainder consists of a study of the colonial Prerogative Court, which had control over probate matters.

Covers the period of colonial history from the beginning of European colonization in the Western Hemisphere up to the time of the American Revolution.

This book offers an innovative, comparative approach to the study of women’s legal rights during a formative period of Anglo–American history. It traces how colonists transplanted English legal institutions to America, examines the remarkable depth of women’s legal knowledge and shows how the law increasingly undermined patriarchal relationships between parents and children, masters and servants, husbands and wives. The book will be of interest to scholars of Britain and colonial America, and to laypeople interested in how women in the past navigated and negotiated the structures of authority that governed them. It is packed with fascinating stories that women related to the courts in cases ranging from murder and abuse to debt and estate litigation. Ultimately, it makes a remarkable contribution to our understandings of law, power and gender in the early modern world.