and thirty years, or until the admission of Maine as a state into the Union. After enunciating a declaration in the nature of a bill of rights, great doctrines foreshadowing the principle upon which the war of the Revolution was fought eighty-four years afterwards, laws were passed for the establishment of courts, viz. : justices, of the peace for the trial of small causes; quarter sessions, corresponding to courts of county commissioners of the present day; inferior Court of Common Pleas; and the Superior Court. A Court of Chancery was created, but was disallowed by the Home Govern ment. The governor and council were made by the charter a Court of Probate; and a Court of Admiralty was also established by the Crown. The Superior Court was com posed of Wm. Stoughton, chief-justice, Thomas Danforth, Wait Winthrop, John Richards, and Samuel Sewall. Judge Lynde, elevated to the bench in 171 2, was the first educated lawyer placed upon it; and William Cushing, appointed in 1772, was the first lawyer promoted to the bench from Maine. This court held two sessions a year in the principal counties, but trials of causes arising in Maine, which formed only one county till 1760, were held in Boston or Charlestown. It was not until 1699 that a term was granted to this state, which was held at Kittery un til 1743, when it was removed to York. This continued to 1760, when the counties of Cumberland and Lincoln were established. The first term in Cumberland County was held in 1761, in Lincoln not until 1786; both held in June, but only for jury trials. The court thus established, in 1699, for Maine, consisted of a chief and four other justices, and so continued during the exist ence of royal authority in the colony. By the Constitution of 1780, the title of this court was changed to that of the Supreme Judicial Court. The judges first appointed under the new constitution were Wm. Cush ing, Nathaniel Peaslee Sargent, James Sul
livan, David Sewall and Jedediah Foster. Three judges constituted a quorum of the court, which sat in all the counties, and they decided all questions of law arising during the progress of jury trials. In consequence of a large accumulation of business in the courts, the number of judges was increased, in 1800, to seven, with two quorums, so that the court could be held in two places at the same time. In 1805 the nisi prius system was introduced, with five judges; three sitting in banc to decide questions of law, and one or more presiding at the trial terms. These judges, until 1792, appeared on the bench in robes and wigs; in summer the robes were black silk, in winter, scarlet cloth. The wig disappeared with the vener able Cushing. The records of this court for all the counties were kept in Boston until 1797, when they were transferred to the custody of the clerks of the Common Pleas of the several counties, except those of Hancock, Lincoln and Washington, where the clerks were appointed by the justices to reside and to keep their records in such place in Lin coln County as the court should direct. The court appointed Jona. Bowman, Jr., clerk for these counties, his residence to be at Pownalborough, now Dresden, where the court-house, now a large, four-story dwellinghouse, remains to be seen as the only rem nant of a once promising city. In Maine, the nisi prius system was retained and ad ministered by a chief and two associate justices until 1847, when an additional justice, Samuel Wells, was appointed. A Common Pleas, called the Inferior Court, consisting of four judges, was organ ized for each county. The first judges of this court, " substantial persons," in the language of the statute, all resided west of Biddeford. John Frothingham of the Cum berland bar, appointed to its bench in 1804, was the first regular practitioner in Maine to sit in this court. Two terms a year were
