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In a projected four-volume series, The Common Law in Colonial America, William E. Nelson will show how the legal systems of Britain's thirteen North American colonies, which were initially established in response to divergent political, economic, and religious initiatives, slowly converged until it became possible by the 1770s to imagine that all thirteen participated in a common American legal order, which diverged in its details but differed far more substantially from English common law. Volume three, The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750, reveals how Virginia, which was founded to earn profit, and Massachusetts, which was founded for Puritan religious ends, had both adopted the common law by the mid-eighteenth century and begun to converge toward a common American legal model. The law in the other New England colonies, Nelson argues, although it was distinctive in some respects, gravitated toward the Massachusetts model, while Maryland's law gravitated toward that of Virginia.
The chief interest in this work rests with the naturalizations in Part III, which were compiled from Maryland's Provincial Court documents in the Hall of Records, Annapolis, Between 1742 and 1775 upwards of 1,000 naturalizations were granted in Maryland. Data in the naturalization records presented here includes the identifying number of the record, date of naturalization, date of communion, volume and page of the Provincial Court Judgments, name, county or town of residence, nationality, church membership, location of church, and witnesses to communion. Place names, clergy, and parish locations are identified in the appendix.
"The main purpose of this work is to chronicle and categorize the life experiences of 519 persons who entered Maryland as indentured servants or, to a lesser extent, as convicts forcibly transported [between 1634-1777]. The text itself is composed of solidly researched sketches of Maryland servants and convicts and their descendants, including 84 that are traced to the third generation or beyond."--Amazon.com.
This study analyzes the development of criminal law during the first several generations of American life. Its comparison of the substantive and procedural law among the colonies reveals the similarities and differences between the New England and the Chesapeake colonies. Bradley Chapin addresses the often-debated question of the “reception” of English law and makes estimates of the relative weight of the sources and methods of early American law. A main theme of his book is that colonial legislators and judges achieved a significant reform of the English criminal law at a time when a parallel movement in England failed. The analysis is made specific and concrete by statistics that show ...
Between 1640 and 1660, England, Scotland, and Ireland faced civil war, invasion, religious radicalism, parliamentary rule, and the restoration of the monarchy. Carla Gardina Pestana offers a sweeping history that systematically connects these cataclysmic events and the development of the infant plantations from Newfoundland to Surinam. By 1660, the English Atlantic emerged as religiously polarized, economically interconnected, socially exploitative, and ideologically anxious about its liberties. War increased both the proportion of unfree laborers and ethnic diversity in the settlements. Neglected by London, the colonies quickly developed trade networks, especially from seafaring New England...