Ordered that Ephriam Dunlap Atty. be fined 5 Dollars for insulting the Court, especially Richard White.
It is not likely that any member of this court had ever held any office prior to his appointment as a justice of the peace therein, and it is not probable that many of them had ever been in a court of any kind before they organized that which they constituted; and yet the record shows that, from the first day of the first term, and on through all of the many stormy sessions which they held thereafter, they guarded and defended jealously the dignity of their court, and enforced obedience to its mandates. It was a heinous offence indeed, and visited with condign punishment, to “insult the Court.”
The aggregate fines imposed on Sam Tate, at one term, amounted to forty thousand pounds;[C] and while fines were imposed on some one at every term, there are but two entries to be found on the record, from the February term, 1778, to and including the November term, 1790, showing that such fines were remitted.
At the May term, 1778, a somewhat embarrassing question presented itself. Some one of three persons, it would appear, had taken from Samuel Sherrill,[D] without his consent, his bay gelding, and left the country. They could not, therefore, get any one of the suspected persons into court or in custody, and they must have been in doubt as to which of the three did in fact ride the horse off; so they said:
On motion it appears that Joshua Williams Johnathan Helms and a certain James Lindley did Feloniously Steal a certain Bay gelding horse from Saml Sherill Senr. Ordered that if the said Saml Sherill can find any property of the said Joshua Williams Johnathan Helms & said Lindley that he take same into his possession.
So far as the record shows, they never caught any of the defendants, but Sherrill must have got close on them at one time; for, at the August term, the court “ordered that a saddle and coat the property of Joshua Williams be sold and the money arising therefrom be left in the possession of Saml Sherill.” They could not capture and punish the thieves, but they could and did authorize Sherrill to seize the property of the rascals wherever he could find it.
The first case of high treason tried by the court was at the August term, 1778. This is the record:
State}
v.} High Treason.
Moses Crawford. }
It is the Opinion of the Court that the defendant be imprisoned during the present war with Great Britain, and the Sheriff take the whole of his estate into custody which must be valued by a jury at the next Court and that the one half of the said estate be kept by the said Sheriff for the use of the State and the other half remitted to the family of defendant.
I have not examined the statute under which this county court tried, convicted and imprisoned defendants charged with treason, and confiscated their property, to see whether or not they had a right to remit one half of confiscated property to the family of the defendant, for the reason that I do not wish to know how the fact was. I am satisfied with the record as they made it, and leave others to look up the statute.