Note 744 — Chapter XIII · ECCLESIASTICAL RITES AND THE RISE OF CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE SOUTHERN COLONIES

Among the thirty-six bills of the assembly of February, 1639/40, which according to Bozman were engrossed for a third reading, but not finally enacted into laws, was one giving the so-called "county court" jurisdiction in "all causes matrimonial, for as much as concerns the trial of covenants and contracts, and the punishment of faults committed against the same; and all offences of incest; attempting of another's chastity; defamation; temerarious administration; detention of legacies; clandestine marriage without banns thrice published or bond entered in the court."—Bozman, op. cit., II, 106, 128, 129. Since at this time there was but one organized county, St. Mary's, and this "county court" is made a tribunal of appeal in all civil common-law cases, the body is really the supreme provincial court, and it is given about the same jurisdiction thereafter exercised by the latter.