St. Mary’s that Robert Nicholls should settle an obligation amounting to fifteen hundred pounds of tobacco which he had refused to deliver. In 1643, John Hollis, as the representative of John Hillard of Maryland, was instructed to enter suit in Virginia against John Thatcher.[1]
These suits were not confined to tobacco. In the same year, William Parry of Virginia, through his attorney, Giles Brent, sought in the court at St. Mary’s a verdict against Thomas Boys for eight pounds of beaver. This beaver was probably the consideration in a sale of cattle, as there seems to have been from an early date a trade in live stock between the citizens of Kecoughtan, the place where Parry resided, and the Colony farther to the north. In 1644, Leonard Calvert and Fulk Brent of Maryland were sued by Richard Bennett for a sum of tobacco due for supplies; and John Walton by Edward Bland for the value of a boat which Walton had obtained while trading in Virginia. Among other citizens of prominence in the latter Colony who at thus time were carrying on commercial transactions with merchants in Maryland, were Thomas Mathew, Robert West, and John Hansford.[2]
When on one occasion it was decided by the authorities in Maryland to make an incursion upon the Indians living upon the Eastern Shore of that Province, a shallop was dispatched to Virginia to procure twenty corselets, a barrel of powder, four rundlets of shot, a barrel of oatmeal, three firkins of butter, and four cases of spirits.[3] In 1640, a proclamation was issued forbidding the transfer in Maryland, without a special license, of goods purchased in the Colony to the south. A strict inquiry was
