Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/129

 detested paper in the province of Maryland. Court was sitting in Frederick Town, but there was no paper of the prescribed variety on hand. On the 23d of November, 1765, twelve free men of Frederick decreed and declared that Frederick Court could attend to its own affairs without any aid from his Majesty the King, and that, paper or no paper, its work should proceed. John Darnell, the clerk, demurred, refused to issue unstamped paper, was committed for contempt, submitted, and thus the first repudiation of the Stamp Act was accomplished. The names of the twelve justices who, without hesitation or fear, took this great step, were these: Joseph Smith, David Lyon, Charles Jones, Samuel Beall, Joseph Beall, Peter Bainbridge, Thomas Price, Andrew Hugh, William Blair, William Luckett, Thomas Dickson and Thomas Beatty.

People took their pleasures gladly in those days, and in an old New York Postboy (January 2, 1766), and a yet older Philadelphia Gazette (December 26, 1765), we read of a right jolly mock funeral, in which the Stamp Act was buried with much ceremony, the chief mourner being the unlucky distributor, Zachariah Hood, in effigy, which, during the frolic,