[756] Ibid., chap. xiii, § v.
[757] Ibid., 1715, chap. xliv, § xxv.
[758] Kilty, Laws, 1777, chap. 12, sec. 5; also Laws of Md., 1763-87 (Annapolis, 1787), chap. xii, sec. v; cf. Cook, "Mar. Cel. in the Colonies," Atlantic, LXI, 357.
[759] The Quakers were strong in Maryland and practiced the same rites as their brothers elsewhere. The Labadists, who had a colony in the province, thoroughly disliked the Friends, though in some respects the doctrines of the two bodies were strikingly alike. The Labadists were even more narrow than the Pennsylvania Friends regarding intermarriage with gentiles. A convert was expected to leave his unregenerate spouse behind when he joined the society; see James, "The Labadist Colony in Maryland," J. H. U. S., XVII, 12 ff., 17 ff.
[760] Archives of Md.: Judicial and Testamentary Business of the Provincial Court, 1649/50-57, 531-33.
[761] "Fundamental Constitutions," c. 96: Poore, Charters, II, 1406. The charter of 1663 allows the proprietors to use their discretion in dispensing from the liturgy and ceremonies of the English church: ibid., 1389. The supplementary charter of 1665 declares that no one shall be "in any way molested, punished, disquieted or called in question, for any differences in opinion, or practice in matter of religious concernments, who do not actually disturb the civil peace." All are to enjoy "judgment and conscience in matter of religion."—Ibid., 1397.
[762] After thus expressing the motive for toleration, the Constitutions curiously provide that any seven or more persons agreeing in any religion may form themselves into a "church or profession;" and no person over seventeen years of age "shall have any benefit or protection of the law, or be capable of any place of profit or honor, who is not a member" of such a church or profession, "having his name recorded in some one, and but one religious record at once."—Ibid., 1407.
[763] N. C. Col. Records, IV, 264; Hawks, Hist. of N. C., II, 341. For Virginia see Lodge, Short History, 60 ff. Cf. Howard, Local Const. History, I, 133, 134.
[764] Paragraphs 45 and 84 of the Fundamental Constitutions (1669) provide for matrimonial jurisdiction and for registration. Paragraph 87 declares that "no marriage shall be lawful, whatever contract and ceremony they have used, till both parties mutually own it before the register of the place where they were married, and he register it, with the names of the father and mother of each party."—Poore, Charters, II, 1402, 1406. Compare Hewitt, An Hist. Account of the Rise and Progress of South Carolina and Georgia (London, 1779), 321-47.
[765] N. C. Col. Rec., I, 184; also in Hawks, Hist. of N. C., II, 152, 153; and Carroll, Hist. Coll. of S. C., II.