The prohibition against women acting as advocates, or barristers, the latter being the term used to designate the office in England, wherever adopted, has continued in force to the present time outside of the United States of America. In England women are permitted to qualify for and practice as attorneys at law and solicitors in chancery, but have not been permitted to become barristers and exercise the rights of that rank in the prosecution of their cases. Were it not for the Calphurnian decree, they still would be ineligible because of being denied admission to the four Inns of Court, where barristers are trained and ranked. These Inns of Court are voluntary societies from whose power to reject applications for membership there is no appeal. The common law of England becoming the law of this country, its women were thought also ineligible to admission to the bar, and but one woman, so far as we know, attempted to test the matter until within the last quarter of a century. This exception was a very notable one in colonial days. It was the case of Margaret Brent, spinster and gentlewoman. She and her sister Mary, kinswomen of the first Lord Proprietary and Governor of Maryland, came to the Province in 1638, “bringing over nine colonists, five men and four women. They took up manors, imported more settlers, and managed their affairs with masculine ability.” So says William Hand Browne in his “History of a Palatinate.” The Governor, Leonard Calvert, died the 9th of June, 1647, leaving Mistress Brent his sole executrix. At the time of his death, he was attorney for his brother, Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, the Lord Proprietary. Mistress Brent succeeded him as attorney for his lordship. Her right to act in this capacity, which she at first claimed “on the strength of her appointment as executrix,” was questioned in the provincial court, where she had occasion frequently to appear in regard to his lordship’s “private estate and transactions in the Province.” The Court ordered that she “should be received as his lordship’s attorney.” The question came up in court on the 3d day of January, 1648, of which record was made as follows: