PREFACE.

V

The names of magistrates and deputies, and of jurors in the sev-eral courts, are, in the original, recorded on the margins of the pages.To retain this arrangement, in the printed copy, would have been, onmany accounts, inconvenient. The names of the members of thecourt have therefore been placed, in double columns, at the com-mencement of each session.

While the orthography of the original has been preserved through-out, it has not seemed necessary to adhere as closely to the anoma-lous punctuation, or the use of capital letters, practised by the earlyrecorders. To have done so would have increased the difficultiesof perusal and materially detracted from the interest of the volumeto the general reader. Yet the liberty taken in these particularshas been cautiously used, and in all cases where the sense of theoriginal could be affected by the change of position or interpolationof a comma or period, the record has been printed precisely as orig-inally punctuated.

The more common abbreviations employed in the work, requireno explanation. Nor will it be necessary to inform those who are atall conversant with old manuscripts, that a single m or n, with a cir-cumflex or dash above it, (rnor n) was frequently substituted for thedouble consonant;—or that the same mark placed above a vowel indi-cated the omission of the consonant, (usually m orn,) immediatelyfollowing ; (as fro for from, tio for lion, at the end of a word.)

Where portions of the original are wholly or in part obliterated,the missing words (when obviously indicated by the context,) havebeen supplied by the transcriber. Such words are, in all cases,included in brackets. If the word to he supplied has seemed at alldoubtful, or if the record could possibly have admitted of a differentreading, the portion in brackets has been italicized or is followed bya mark of interrogation. In a few instances, where a slip of therecorder’s pen has occasioned an evident error in the original, thecorrection has been suggested in a foot note, or indicated by an itali-cized word, placed in brackets, with an interrogation mark.

In two instances only, slight changes have, for obvious reasons,been made in the language of the record. In one case, (on page 55,)a few words, (in brackets,) have been substituted, as of less excep-tionable phraseology than the original: in the other, (on page 157,)the omission of a line is indicated by a note at the foot of the page.

Such extracts from the Records of the United Colonies as havebeen occasionally introduced in the notes and appendix, have beenmade from the manuscript (cotemporary) copy preserved in the Sec-