ny, he directed
that every one thousand acres or greater quantity so given to any
adventurer "should be erected into a manor with a court-baron and
court-leet to be from time to time held within every such manor
respectively."

There were many grants of one thousand acres or more, and Maryland
"lords of the manor" became quite common. These "lords" were the
official heads of numerous tenants and leaseholders who were settled
on their large estates. Yet the manor, as a free-governing community,
was a stronghold of liberty. At the courts baron and leet the tenants
elected the minor officers, tried offences, and made by-laws for their
own government. Later, when negroes substituted white laborers, these
feudal manors changed to plantations worked by slaves instead of free
tenants.[15]

Even great office-holders and a landed aristocracy were insufficient
to sustain the regal dignity to which Lord Baltimore aspired.
Apparently, his right of initiating legislation and dictating the
make-up of the assembly ought to have been sufficient. But political
and social equality sprang from the very conditions of life in the New
World; and despite the veneering of royalty, Maryland came soon to be
a government of the people. The struggle began in the assembly which
met in February, 1635, but not much is known of the proceedings of
this assembly beyond the fact that it assumed the initiative and drew
up a code to which Lord Baltimore refused his assent.

Of subsequent assemblies the record is copious enough. Lord Baltimore
had the right under his charter to summon "all the freemen, or the
greater part of them, or their representatives," and thus for a long
time there was a curious jumble of anomalies, which rendered the
assembly peculiarly sensitive to governmental influence. The second
assembly met at St. Mary's, January 25, 1638, and consisted of the
governor and council, freemen specially summoned, freemen present of
their own volition, and proxies.[16] Governor Calvert submitted a code
of laws sent from Lord Baltimore, and it was rejected by a vote of
thirty-seven to fourteen; but twelve of the minority votes were in two
hands, the governor and Secretary Lewger, an illustration of the
danger of the proxy system.

Not long after, in a letter August 21, 1638, the proprietor yielded by
authorizing Leonard in the future to consent to laws enacted by the
freemen, which assent should temporarily make them valid until his own
confirm