towns, of the same size, in any part of the British dominions, that can boast a more polished society."2 The nabobs of Maryland's provincial capital readily accepted, and indeed assiduously imitated, the cultural leadership of London in literature, drama, architecture, dress, social customs, and values. Maryland, however, was not England and Annapolis was not London. Exact duplication of English society was impossible. The relative newness of the colony, the heterogeneous population, and the staple crop economy were all factors that worked against precise imitation. Even so, a British visitor could find much that was familiar in a society that prided itself on the English traditions of its institutions, customs, and social behavior. The English-oriented, aristocratic families of colonial Maryland, with but few exceptions, have not received their due from historians and biographers.3 Although caused in part by the paucity of private letters, diaries, and other personal papers, this failure should, and can, be corrected. Family studies of the Lloyds, Taskers, Dorseys, Goldsboroughs, Tilghmans, Hammonds, Platers, Bordleys, and Protestant Carrolls are needed. Until the economic, political, and social contributions of these proud and wealthy clans are known, our knowledge and understanding of eighteenthcentury Maryland will be incomplete. Fortunately, a family biography of the influential Bordleys of colonial Annapolis is now possible. The abundant public records and the five extant letter books of one of the family's most literate members show that from the early years of the eighteenth century, when Thomas Bordley rose to legal, political, and social prominence, to the first years of the nineteenth, when John Beale Bordley died at the age of seventy-seven, there were only a few years when a Bordley did not occupy a position of power and influence in Maryland.4 Stephen, as the middle member of the talented eighteenth-century Bordley triumvirate, was the link between his contentious father, Thomas, and his versatile half brother, John Beale. Like the