HISTORY of PRINTING in COLONIAL MARYLAND

1686-1776

r

A HISTORY of P R I N T I N G

IN

COLONIAL

1686-1776

By LAWRENCE C. WROTH, First Assistant Librarian of the Enoch Pratt Free Library

PUBLISHED BY THE TYPOTHETAE of BALTIMORE

MCMXXII

'Publication (Committee

NATHAN BILLSTEIN, of The Lord Baltimore Press, Chairman EDWARD B. PASSANO, of The Williams 6? Wilkins Company GEORGE K. HORN, of The Maryland Color Printing Company

To His Father and JHCother

Its Earliest and Kindest 'Patrons

this ^ookjs dedicated by

the ^Author

T is only by infrequent contributions that there is being formed a body of writing on that phase of American liter- ary history which has to do with the history of printing in the original colonies. For generations in England and in continental Europe the investigation of typographi- cal origins has been a field of research in which scholars have taken a particular delight, but although Isaiah Thomas wrote his 11 History of Printing in America" more than a hundred years ago, and although in general American bibliography, Sabin and Charles Evans have compiled notable works which should have given impetus to this study in the United States, yet it remains true that intensive investigations of the printing history of the individual colonies, or of the is sue of their presses, have been undertaken with noticeable reluctance. When there have been I mentioned the works of Hildeburnfor Pennsylvania and New York, of | Roden and Little field for early Massachusetts, of JPeeks for North Caro- \ Una, of Clayton-Torrence for Virginia, and of The John Carter Brown Library for Rhode Island, the tale has been completed.1

The typographical history of Mary land, the fourth of the English colo- nies in which the art was established, had never been made the subject of an especial study until the present work was undertaken. One whose interest lay in that subject had for authority only the general history of Isaiah Thomas, which, in its section devoted to Maryland, added inaccuracy of statement to an inevitable poverty of detail. Writing before the provincial

^ildeburn, C. S. R., A Century of Printing, The Issues of the Press in Pennsylvania, 1685-1784. 2 v. Phila. 1885. Sketches of Printers and Printing in Colonial New York. N.Y. 1895.

Roden, R. F., The Cambridge Printers, 1638-1692. N.Y. 1905.

Littlefield, G. E., The Early Massachusetts Press, 1638-1711. 2 v. Boston, 1907.

Weeks, S. B., The Press of North Carolina in the i8th Century. Brooklyn, 1893.

Clayton-Torrence, William, A Trial Bibliography of Colonial Virginia, 1607-1776. (Published in two sections as parts of the "Report of the Librarian of the Virginia State Library," for 1908 and 1909.)

Rhode Island Imprints, 1727-1800. Compiled by [Miss Rebecca P. Steere] the John Carter Brown Library. Providence, 1915.

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records of Maryland had been collected and published^ Mr. Thomas as- serted that -printing in Lord Baltimore's province began with the press which William Parks set up in Annapolis in the y e ar 1726 ^and succeed- ing writers have repeated his error and continue still to repeat it in spite of the accessibility to them of records unknown to the pioneer historian. Occasionally ',// is true^a writer has discovered traces of an earlier group of Maryland printers than that which Mr. Thomas had knowledge of^but as a general thing these discoveries have not been made the matter of per- manentrecord, so that for all practical purposes the current knowledge of Maryland printing origins remains today in the state in which Thomas left it, and this is true in spite of the efforts at correction made by the edi- tors of his second edition in the year 1874. OH tne other hand^ if in the accepted chronology of American printing^ the date of the Maryland ori- gins is set a generation later than is correct^ the traditional date of its beginning^ a tradition fabricated less than half a century ago byj. Thomas Scharf) has been placed at least two generations earlier than is warranted by the evidence.

It is proposed by the writer of the present work, dismissing as inde- fensible Scharfs unsupported assertions , to demonstrate that printing began in Maryland probably forty years before Parks set up his press in Annapolis t and that three printers operated in the Province and two others were licensed to operate there before the year which is usually ac- cepted as marking the inauguration of the typographic art on the shores of the Chesapeake. The history of the later presses also will be set forth with some minuteness ^ and in an appendix to the narrative will be placed a list of all Maryland imprints between the years 1689 and 1776, in so far as these could be collected either at first handy]rom printed bibliog- raphies^ or by title from records presumptive of their publication.

If it seem at times in this narrative that undue attention has been given

1 In the facr of this generalization, one must call attention to the fact that various Maryland writers, partic- ularly William Hand Browne and Bernard C. Steiner, editors of the Archives oj Maryland, have consistently pointed to evidence of the existence of earlier printers than were known to Thomas. Hugh A. Morrison cited evi- dence of the operations of the first Maryland printer in a note, pp. 62 and 63, in his Catalogue of the Books, Manu- scripts and Maps Relating Principally to America, Collected by the late Levi Z. Letter. Washington, 1907; and an anonymous writer in the Baltimore Sun, June 1, 1907, adduced similar evidence from the Provincial records.

2Scharf, J. T., History of Maryland. 3 v. Baltimore, 1879, 1: 190; for a discussion of Scharfs story, see appen- dix of this narrative.

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to the bibliography of Maryland laws and to the legislation underlying their publication, it must be remembered that it was the printing of laws and the public business generally which brought printers to the early American cities. In the seventeenth century , in such capitals as Annap- olis and Williamsburg, the private patronage of the press would not have provided a living for the least ambitious of its votaries. Public printing was the living of the printer in colonial Maryland until after the middle of the eighteenth century; the publication of the laws was his reason for being in the Province. The eye of authority looked with uneasiness on such issues of his press as did not initiate in a government office ', and its hand was continually raised in the gesture of plucking away the license by favor of which he gained his bread. The literary activity of the Prov- ince came late into being, and the religious life was of a sort that rarely sought expression in print. In these pages a few sermons will be taken account of, and a political document or two will be noticed, but it is pre- eminently the printing of the Maryland laws that forms the framework for the early part of the narrative which here ensues.

It is obvious that to have carried through a work of this character with- out assistance from many persons would have been a supremely tedious task, but fortunately the author has not been compelled to encounter his difficulties alone. In the course of his adventure he has found a helping hand reached out to him in whatever direction he has turned, and for the assistance which has been freely given by everyone to whom he has ap- plied, he here acknowledges himself most grateful. As usual in such casesy however, there are certain individuals whose aid has been of such a charac- ter as to give him an especial pleasure in its acknowledgment. Foremost among these must be mentioned Mr. Wilberforce Eames of the NewYork Public Library, that kindly book-lover and scholar who by making himself the servant of all American bibliographers has become their master. It is with an added sense of obligation, too, that the author recalls the interest displayed in the work at every step in its progress by his chief in the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Dr. Bernard C. Steiner, whose knowledge of even this bypath of colonial history has proved to be an unfailing source which could be drawn upon without restraint, as its richness was yielded always with-

[vii]

out stint. Mr. Leonard L. Mackall, of Baltimore and Savannah, erudite bibliophile and citizen of the world, has given to the author guidance as to sources of information, and has inspired him with something of his own zest in literary research. Mr. L. H. Dielman, of the Peabody Institute, Bal- timore, not only has given freely of his bibliographical and historical knowl- edge, but as well has displayed throughout that peculiarly sympathetic quality of interest and encouragement which is his choice possession. Mr. George Watson Cole, the Henry E. Huntington librarian, in a specific matter has made easy a part of the task which the author's ignorance of certain bibliographical practices was rendering laborious. For assistance in other specific points thanks are due to Mr. Edward Ingle and J. Hall Pleas ants, M.D. of Baltimore; the Rev. Thomas Hughes and the late Rev. E. I. Devitt, both of the Society of Jesus; Messrs. Hugh A. Morrison and J. C. Fitzpatrick of the Library of Congress; Mr. Victor Hugo P alts its of the New York Public Library and Mr. Earl G. Swem of the William and Mary College Library. A particular acknowledgment should be made to Mr. Robert A. Hayes and Mr. Charles Fickus of the Maryland Histori- cal Society staff for cheerful and patient acceptance of almost daily de- mands on their attention. For courtesies extended both by correspondence and in person thanks are owing to the librarians and staffs of the Library of Congress; the Peabody Library, the Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Maryland Diocesan Library, of Baltimore; the Maryland State Library and the Land Office, of Annapolis; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Ridgway Branch of the Philadelphia Library Company, the Universi- ty of Pennsylvania Library and the American Philosophical Society; the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society and the New York Bar Association Library; the Boston Athencsum, Harvard College Library, and the Massachusetts Historical Society; the American Anti- quarian Society; the John Carter Brown Library and the Rhode Island Historical Society.

An acknowledgment of indebtedness would be incomplete which failed to comment on the spirit in which a difficult piece of typographical work has been handled by Mr. Norman T. A. Munder and his associates, the printers of the book. Each person in that establishment concerned in the

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publication has seemed to the author to be animated by the finest -pride of craftsmanship, and more than this it would be difficult to say in praise of practitioners of their exacting art. It is a matter of no little interest in the record of present-day American presses that the completion of this book coincides almost to a day with the conclusion by Mr. Munder and two of his associates of thirty-five years in which they have worked to- gether in the production of works distinguished alike for beauty and typographical excellence.

If it is certain that the book could not have been written without assis- tance from those persons and institutions which have been named, it is equally certain that alone the author could not have hoped to publish the results of his researches in a suitable form. Owing to the interest of Mr. Nathan Billstein, however, this responsibility was taken from him by the Typothetae of Baltimore, an association of master printers, the members of which by this action proclaim their pride in the printing art and their interest in its traditions in the State where they practice it. It is the au- thor s hope that their confidence in his work will be justified by its use- fulness to the book-loving world.

LAWRENCE C. WROTH. The Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, May 10, 1922.

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CONTENTS

Chapter 'Page

INTRODUCTION v

i THE NUTHEAD PRESS OF JAMESTOWN, ST. MARY'S

AND ANNAPOLIS i

ii WILLIAM BLADEN, PUBLISHER, AND His PRINTER,

THOMAS READING 17

in THOMAS READING, PUBLIC PRINTER 27

iv EVAN JONES, BOOKSELLER, AND EDITIONS OF LAWS

PRINTED IN PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON ... 39

v JOHN PETER ZENGER, PUBLIC PRINTER OF MARY- LAND 49

vi WILLIAM PARKS, PRINTER, OF MARYLAND AND VIR- GINIA 59

vii JONAS AND ANNE CATHARINE GREEN, PRINTERS TO

THE PROVINCE 75

vin BACON'S "LAWS OF MARYLAND" 95

ix THE BEGINNING OF PRINTING IN BALTIMORE . . in x WILLIAM AND MARY KATHERINE GODDARD . . . 119

APPENDIX: THE FABLED JESUIT PRESS— DOCUMENTS RELATING TO PARKS AND GREEN 147

MARYLAND IMPRINTS OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1689-1776 155

INDEX 257

T>ESCRIPriON OF THE TLATES

PLATE I, page 6

Reproduced from the only recorded copy, that in the Public Record Office, London. This is the earliest example of the Maryland press known to be in existence. (See No. I of Bibliographical Appendix.)

PLATE II, page 20

The Brinley copy, reproduced by permission of the Maryland Historical Society, its pres- ent owner. In the reproduction, the upper left-hand corner, including part of the letter "N" has been restored by the engraver. This is the earliest example of the Maryland press known to be in America. (See No. 5 of Bibliographical Appendix.)

PLATE III, page 32

Page 1 13 of the collection of Maryland laws of 1707. Reproduced by permission of its pres- ent owner, a descendant of its original owner, Robert Goldsborough, Esq., of "Ashby," Talbot County, Maryland. The volume has been deposited temporarily in the Pea- body Library of Baltimore. (See No. if of Bibliographical Appendix.)

PLATE IV, page 64

Reproduced from a photostat copy of the title-page taken from the copy in the Library of Congress. (See No. 43 of Bibliographical Appendix.)

PLATE V, page 66

"Reproduced from the only known copy, that in the British Museum. (See No. 70 Biblio- graphical Appendix.)

PLATE Va, page 69

See this title in Bibliographical Appendix for the years 1727-1732, 1734. Reproduced by permission from copy in the Maryland Historical Society.

PLATE VI, page 78

Reproduced by permission from the copy in the Maryland Diocesan Library, Baltimore. Its first owner, as the autograph and date indicate, was the Rev. Samuel Keene, rector of St. Anne's Parish, Annapolis, 1761-1767. The word "Propriety" in the title has been restored for the purposes of this reproduction. (See No. 255 of Bibliographical Appendix.)

PLATE VII, page 86

Reproduced by permission from the copy in the Maryland Diocesan Library, Baltimore. Formerly owned by the Rt. Rev.Thomas John Claggett, first bishop of Maryland. (See No. 243 of Bibliographical Appendix.)

PLATE VIII, page 92

Reproduced by permission from the copy in the Maryland Historical Society. (See No. 291 of Bibliographical Appendix.)

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'DESCRIPTION OF THE PL4TES

PLATE IX, page 108

Reproduced from the author's copy of the large paper edition. Its original owner, Walter Dulany, Esq., of Annapolis, one of the underwriters of the publication, presented this copy to Messrs. Capel & Osgood Hanbury, London merchants in the Maryland trade. (See No. 254. of Bibliographical Appendix.)

PLATES X# AND X£, page 218

These headings of the second Maryland Gazette are reproduced to supplement the verbal descriptions given under this title for the years 1762-1776. Reproduced by permission from copies in the Maryland Historical Society. The typical heading of the earlier issues, beginning with 1745, is shown facing page 24, vol. 2, of J. Thomas Scharf's History of Maryland, in the form of a reproduction of the first issue of this newspaper.

PLATES XI# AND XI£, page 240

Headings of Goddard's Maryland Journal, begun 1773, and Dunlap's Maryland Gazette, begun 1775. Reproduced by permission from copies in the Maryland Historical Society.

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HI STORY of PRINTING in COLONIAL MARYLAND

CHAPTER ONE

The Nuthead 'Press of ^Jamestown, St. tJKCary *s and ^Annapolis — William Nuthead \ the Inaugurator of Printing in Virginia land— 'Dinah Nuthead, his Successor

j[N THE year 1671, the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations addressed to Sir William Berkeley, the royal governor of Virginia, a series of questions relating to the state of his government. In his reply to that one of the questions which had to do with religious education in the colony, Sir William, a choleric old gentleman, who had been much vexed by the local radicals, evinced the wrong- headed honesty of conviction which characterized many of his utterances and actions. "I thank God," he wrote, "there are no free schools nor printing and I hope we shall not have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world, andprintinghas divulged them, . . . God keep us from both I"1

It is plainly to be perceived from this declaration that there existed small chance for the establishment of a press in Virginia under the Berkeley regime, but Sir William's long governorship came to an end eventually, and in the year 1682, during the administration of Lord Culpeper, Mr. John Buckner,2 a merchant of Gloucester County, brought in a press and a printer and set up at Jamestown the second printing establishment of English America. Begun auspiciously enough, what seems to have been the first venture of this partnership met with such ill favor from the authorities as to discour- age further attempts at printing in Virginia for many years. The action of the Virginia Council on hearing that Buckner's press was preparing to issue certain session laws is told in the following record:3 Att a Councell held att James Citty February 21 : 1682/3. . . . Mr. John Buckner being by his Excellency Thomas Lord Culpeper ordered to appear

1 Hening, W. W., Statutes at Large . ..of Virginia, 1: 517.

2 John Buckner, Gent., the ancestor of a numerous family in the United States, patented 1,000 acres of land in Gloucester County in 1669, and became a merchant with wide connections in Maryland and Virginia. Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 1 : 406, and William and Mary College Quarterly, 7:9, 10 and 1 1.

1 Public Record Office: C. O. 5. vol. 51, No. 42, 1683, Jan.-May. See Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser. A. fc? W. I., 1681-1685, p. 390, No. 961.

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*A History of Printing in Colonial <3tCary land

this day before him & the Councel to answer for his presumption, in printing the acts of Assembly made in James Citty in November 1682, and several other papers, without lycence, acquainted this board, that he had several times commanded the Printer not to let any thing whatever passe his presse, before he had obtained his Excellencies lycence, and that noe acts of assembly are yet printed, only two sheetes, wch were designed to be presented to his Excellency for his approbation of the print: This board having seriously considered, what the said Mr. John Buckner has said, in his defence, are well satisfied there- with, but for prevention of all troubles and inconveniences, that may be occasioned thorow the liberty of a presse, doe hereby order that Mr. John Buckner and William Nulhead (sic) the Printer enter into bond of one hundred pounds sterling with good security, that from and after the date hereof, nothing be printed by either of them, or any others for them, of what nature soever, in the aforesaid presse or any other in this Colony, untill the signifi- cation of his Maj'ties pleasure shall be known therein, which his Excellency hath promised to acquaint his Majesty with. NICHO: SPENCER, Secr'ty.

Several months later, on September 29, 1683, tn^s order of the Virginia Council was read before the Lords of Trade in England, and it was by them decided that the new governor, Lord Francis Howard of Effingham, should pursue a policy of absolute prohibition in regard to printing in his government. On December 14, 1683, they approved the King's letters of instruction to Howard, in which his Majesty had written,

"And whereas We have taken notice of the inconvenience that may arise by the Liberty of Printing in that Our Colony, you are to provide by all necessary orders and Directions that no person be permitted to use any press for printing upon any occasion whatsoever."1

Seven years later this restriction was modified to accord with the usual form of conditional prohibition under which the press operated in other colonies. In his instructions of October 9, 1690, Howard was told that "No printer's press is to be used without the Governor's leave first obtained,"2 but even then, after it had been put on the same footing of sufferance as it stood upon in the northern colonies, the press in Virginia did not revive as might have been expected.3 It was not until the coming of William Parks to Williamsburg in the year 1730 that printing became an established fea- ture of life in the oldest of the American colonies, although as has been shown, it had been practised there for a short period nearly half a century before this time.4

1 Cal. State Papers, Col. Series, A. 6? W. I., 1681-1685, Nos. 1416 and 1428; new number in P. R. O. is C. O. 389/8, pp. 267-272. Colonial Entry Book. Plantations General, 1679-1684.

2 Cal. State Papers, 1689-1692, No. 1099.

3 The lethargy of Virginia in regard to printing during the ensuing forty years is not easily accounted for. In Maryland, during the same period, as the narrative will bring out, various presses existed and were patronized by the government, and in Pennsylvania in spite of the disapproval of William Penn {Minutes of Provincial Council of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1852, i: 278), the press throve from its first establishment.

4 A single Williamsburg imprint of the year 1702, with printer's name given as "Fr. Maggot," has been re- corded. It is generally supposed that this imprint is false. As far as the author knows, it has never been made the subject of an extended investigation. Evans No. 1057.

[a]

The Nuthead Press • William and 'Dinah Nuthead

The foregoing incidents in the history of the neighboring colony are re- lated here for the reason that they have a direct bearing upon the story of the press in Maryland, and in particular upon the life of the first Mary- land printer. It seems clear that the orders which Howard brought with him to Virginia effectually put an end to the venture of John Buckner and William Nuthead. To Buckner, the merchant and planter, the failure of the press meant only disappointment and vexation; to Nuthead, the printer, it meant ruin. Under circumstances so distressing as this, it has been the im- memorial custom for the Virginian to move to Maryland, and Nuthead, not long after his press had been stopped, packed his equipment and betook himself to the traditional place of refuge. In Lord Baltimore's province, he lived and worked at his vocation from 1686, or earlier, until his death in the year I695.1

"WILLIAM NUTHEAD OF ST. MARYS CITTY PRINTER"

The decade from 1685 to 1695 is less well known than almost any other period of Maryland history, for the reason that the documentary record for these years contains many lamentable gaps. During the Protestant Revolution of 1689, and for two years thereafter, the records were kept either badly or not at all, and in the removal of the capital from St. Mary's to Annapolis in the year 1694 many of the precious documents of earlier years were damaged, while of those which remained intact a number of impor- tant volumes were consumed by the fire which destroyed the State House in the year 1704. On account of these several losses, it is not possible to tell the story even of the principal events of the period in satisfactory detail, much less to relate consecutively the history of an individual citizen of the Province in those troublous years. In the documents which have survived accident and neglect, however, there remain a sufficient number of refer- ences to one William Nuthead of St. Mary's to enable the investigator to delineate in outline his life in Maryland, and to claim for him the distinc- tion of having established and operated the first Maryland press. The exist- ence of his or of any other printing office in seventeenth-century Maryland has been questioned, but it is believed that the evidence which will now be adduced establishes beyond doubt the fact that the press of William Nuthead was in more or less regular operation at St. Mary's during the years from 1686 to 1695.

The first recorded evidence of the presence of a printer in Maryland occurs in an act of Assembly for October 1686, in which provision was

1For a brief statement of Nuthead's venture in Virginia, see Bruce, P. ^..^Institutional History of Virginia in the ifth Century. 2 v. N. Y., 1910, 1 : 402 and 403.

[3]

<v^ History of Printing in Colonial tJfCary land

made for the "Payment and Assessmt of the Publiqe Charge of this Prov- ince." Therein, among many others, is found this item, "To Wm. Nutt- head Printer five Thousand five Hundred and fifty pounds of Tobaccoe."1 In view of his earlier history in Virginia, and of his later history in Mary- land, the simple and natural assumption in reading the item which has been quoted is that when the Province paid William Nuthead for services rendered, and designated his trade in the act of payment, those services had been performed in the practise of the trade therein specified.

In the following month, November i686,"William Nuthead of St. Marys Citty Printer" took up three hundred acres of land, known thereafter as "Nutheads Choice," lying in Talbot County and "to beholden of theMan- nor of Baltemore." The annual quit rent for the property was named as twelve shillings sterling, but the conditions under which the warrant had been granted were not specified in the certificate of survey. A short six months after the date of his warrant, on April 4, 1687, f°r a sufficient sum, the amount of which was not disclosed, "William Nuthead of St. Marys Citty Printer" sold or made perpetual assignment of his plantation in Tal- bot to one Edward Fisher, and with its sale "Nutheads Choice," together with its new owner, becomes of no further interest in this narrative.2

THE FIRST RECORDED ISSUE OF THE MARYLAND PRESS,

THE "PROTESTANT DECLARATION" OF 1689

William Nuthead's earliest printing activities have not been kept in re- membrance. In spite of the fact that he was a resident of St. Mary's City and in the pay of the Provincial government certainly as early as 1686, it is necessary to pass over the ensuing three years to the riotous days of the "Protestant Revolution" before there is found an issue of his press which has been recorded by name. The circumstances out of which arose the pub- lication in question give it a singular interest in Maryland political history. After overturning the Proprietary government in July 1689, Colonel John Coode and seven others of the leaders of the Revolution drew up a manifesto entitled "The Declaration of the Reasons and Motives for the Present Ap- pearing in Arms of their Majesties Protestant Subjects in the Province of

1 Archives of Maryland, 13: 131. The assumption will be permitted that William Nulhead, a printer, compelled to forego his trade in Virginia in the year 1683, and William Nuthead, a printer in the pay of the Maryland gov- ernment in 1686, were one and the same individual. Whether the assumption be allowed, however, is of compara- tively small importance in the ensuing relation of the activities of William Nuthead, the first Maryland printer. It should be said too, that although he is variously known as Nulhead, Nuthead, Nutthead and Nothead, his name certainly was not "Roughead" as it is given in the number of the Virginia Magazine of 'History and Biogra- phy previously referred to.

1 Land Records, Liber 22, folio 295, ms. in Land Office, Annapolis, Md. The parcel of land described lay in what is now Caroline County, then a part of Talbot.

[4]

The Nuthead Press • William and T)inah Nuthead

Maryland,"1 signed it as of July 25, 1689, and transmitted the original or a manuscript copy of it to London for the information of the King in whose name and interest their subversion of the government had been undertaken. A perusal of the document makes clear the fact that it was intended not only as a justification of their proceedings in the eyes of King and Council, but even more as a means of explaining their usurpation and gaining sup- port for it from the people of Maryland.

To make effective their purpose of gaining adherents it is evident that a wide local distribution of the "Declaration" would have been regarded as desirable by the Associators, andnothing could have been more natural than that they should have turned to the printer who was established in the vil- lage where they had ensconced themselves and demanded his services in the interests of their propaganda. This much is assumption. No copy re- mains of the "Declaration" as printed by William Nuthead of St. Mary's City to demonstrate that the Associators pursued the course which has been suggested, but that such an edition of it was actually published is rendered almost certain by the circumstance that later in the year 1689, one Randal Taylor, a London publisher, issued an edition of the Maryland "Declara- tion"2 which bore as its colophon the following succinct statement: "Mary- land, Printed by William Nuthead at the City of St. Maries. Re-printed in London, and sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers Hall, 1689." While it is true that frequently through the ages books have been issued bearing false or misleading imprints, there has never been adduced a reason for be- lieving that the London edition of the Maryland "Declaration" belongs in that category. William Nuthead was an actual person living in St. Mary's City in the year 1689, and in the same year a London publisher declared in a work licensed by an authorized official that this William Nuthead had printed the original edition of the work in question. It is axiomatic that the statement of an imprint is to be accepted as true unless reasons can be urged for believing it to be false; otherwise imprints would possess no significance, and long ago would have fallen into disuse.

Formerly the claim that Maryland printing began in the year 1689 was not allowed because no Maryland printed copy of the "Protestant Decla- ration" could be produced as evidence in support of it, and although even

1 Original signed document in Public Record Office, London. See Cal. State Papers, A. &? W. /., 1689-1692, No. 290. Copy of original published in Archives of Maryland, 8: 101.

2 The full titleof the "Protestant Declaration," as printed by Randolph Taylor in London is as follows: The Dec- laration of the Reasons and Motives for the Present Appearing in Arms of their Majesties Protestant Subjects in the Province of Maryland. Licens'd, November 28, 1689. J. F. [Colophon:] Maryland, Printed by William Nuthead at the City of St. Maries. Re-printed in London, and sold by Randal Taylor near Stationers Hall, 1689. For additional facts concerning it, see under the above title in the bibliographical appendix.

[5]

ADDRESS

Of the Reprefentatives of their Majeftyes SiiiW?., in the Provinnce of Mary-Land Affcmbled.

To tie /0ȣ* mft Excellent Mat fa.

Whereas we are i with all humilky i fully aflured that the bcne* fit -of your Maicftycs. glorious undertakeings and bleflld luc- ce/5, for the Protcftant Religion, r.nd civil rights and libertyes of your Subic&s was gracioujly imcndcd to be Exrw/iiw, as well tothis remote psrc, as 10 all othcrsot ) our Majellyes Territories and Countries } and T>*mi' the'tby intiuenc'd toexprels cur uttnoft ^eal 2nd endeavouts for voar Maicllyes Icrvice, the Proteftant Religion, here of late- notori. cully oppol'd, and your Maicflyes Soveraigne Right and Dominion, to rhi> your MaieftyesProMnceof Mary-land, invaded and undermined, by cur late Popilh Governoius their Agents arid Complices.

Wee ycnr Af-iHlyer moil ducyful and loyal Subicfts of this Province, being ^llimbled, as the Repreleiuative body of the fame, doe humbly pray your Aftieityfsgnuior.sconfideration, of the great G re vances and (Jpprellions, wte lave long laicn under, lately reprcfented to yourAfa- icllv, anddireded to your Maiertyes principal Secretary es of State, in a certaine iJeclarAtion from the Coroinders, Officers and Gtutlemen lately in /frmes (or your Maicltyts Scivicc and the Dctcnce oi the ProtelUnc Reii^'on.

And that your Mail (ly \vouldbegracioullypleafd hfuchwayes and n»eti OJs as to your /'rincely wifdom fhall fccme meet,to appoint fuch A deliverance ro your Suffering People, whereby for the future our 7(f- /iffion Ki^bnand LUxrtjn may be becurd, under a 'Proteflaat Go~»em»ie^t^ by your Ma iri I j cs gracious direction Elpcci.il! y to be appointed - -• We will wayte with all becon.eing Duty snd Loyalty your Maieftyes Pica. fart herein ; And will in the mean time, to the haUrd of our lives and Fortunes ?erfrverf, and continue to v indicate and defend your Maieftyes Rioht and SoVeraigne Dominion over this Province, the Proteftam RtUgi- on, and the civil rights and libertyes of your Maieftyes Subjects here, a- rainft all manner of attempts and oppoficion whatfoever- Hereby una- nvmoully dcclareing, that as wee have a //.// ftnccoi the bleflingof /j'ea- vcaven upon your Maieftyes Generous undertake ings, foi vvillende*. vour to exprels our due gtatitude forth; fame, as becomes profeflbrs oi* the bcfl of Kcligioiis, and Subiecls to the be ft of Princes.

Maryland printed by order of the AflemblyatthcCitty of St. Maryes Auguft : zdth.

II

PLATE I. See page xiii.

The Nuthead Press - William and 'Dinah Nuthead

yet no such copy has been discovered, the necessity for evidence of this character is now less imperative because of the greater existing knowledge of the life and activity of William Nuthead, and because through the dis- covery of a broadside printed in Maryland a few weeks after the presumed publication of the "Declaration" at St. Mary's City, the burden of the claim has been shifted to a more firmly established base. In the following section of the narrative the broadside which is here referred to will be described and discussed.

THE FIRST EXTANT ISSUE OF THE MARYLAND PRESS, THE ASSEMBLY "ADDRESS" OF 1689

The services of William Nuthead to the Associators were not concluded by the printing of their "Declaration." Soon after the publication of that document, addresses from various sources began to be drawn up for pre- sentation to the King, some of them by the Protestant supporters of the Revolution, others by Protestants who had remained loyal to the Proprie- tary and his government. In the class first described was an"Address"from the Assembly, which, in the official manuscript copy transmitted to his Majesty, was dated "September 4, 1689." This copy, as it turned out, was received by the Lords of Trade on December 31, I689,1 but fearing with good cause that it had been captured by the French,2 Coode wrote to the Privy Council on December lyth and stated in the letter that he was send- ing enclosed additional copies of the "Declaration" and of the "Address" of the Assembly.3 On February 7, 1689/90, Lord Shrewsbury turned over to the Lords of Trade Coode's letter4 and a printed copy of this "Address,"5 printed it seems before its adoption by the delegates, but certified as an authentic copy in the following words written across its bottom margin by the Clerk of the Assembly: "This is a true coppy of the Original. Attested per John Llewellin Clk Assembly."

The title and description of this broadside, preserved in the Public Rec- ord Office, London,6 is as follows:

The | Address | of the Representatives of their Majestyes Protestant | Subjects, in the Provinnce (sic) of Mary-Land Assembled.)

1 Arc hives of Maryland, 13: 239 and 240, where it is reprinted with the Lords of Trade indorsements.

* Archives of Maryland, 8: 167.

8 Archives of Maryland, 8: 151 and 152.

4 Archives of Maryland, 8: 152. Lord Shrewsbury was one of his Majesty's principal secretaries of state. For an account of him see"Talbot, Charles, I2th Earl and only Duke of Shrewsbury" in the Dictionary of National Biography.

6 Archives of Maryland, 13: 231 and 232, where it is reprinted with the Lords of Trade indorsements.

' Old reference for this paper in P. R. O. was America and West Indies. No. 556, B. D., p. 6. Noted in the ms. calendar of Maryland papers in P. R. O. compiled by Henry Stevens, now in the Maryland Historical Society, as B. T. Maryland, vol. i.B. D., p. 6. Its present number is C. O. 5/718.

^A History of Printing in (^o Ionia I ^Cary land

It contains a concise statement of the causes of the Revolution and an ex- pression of loyalty to their Majesties, presented in terms appreciably more moderate than had been employed in the "Declaration," and what is of the greatest importance in this story of the Maryland press, it bears at the bot- tom of the sheet the following colophon:

Maryland printed by order of the Assembly at the Citty |of St. Maryes August: 26th. 1689.1

Coode's assertion in his letter of December lyth that he was sending a copy of the Assembly's "Address," the fact that Coode's letter and a printed, attested copy of that "Address" were received by the Lords of Trade from Lord Shrewsbury on the same day, and the colophon of the "Address" it- self combine to furnish a reasonably clear pedigree for the printed broad- side in the Public Record Office which, in the absence of a copy of the Maryland edition of the "Declaration," must be claimed as the earliest ex- tant issue of the Maryland press, and the chief bibliographical evidence for the seventeenth-century origin of typography in Lord Baltimore's Province.

LATER ACTIVITIES OF MARYLAND'S FIRST PRINTER

When we find Nuthead figuring once more in public affairs, the Province, now under a royal governor, has resumed that aspect of peacefulness into which the turbulency of the Protestant Associators had entered brusquely some four years before. On October 14, 1693, there was read in the Council a deposition made by William Nuthead in regard to a printing "job" which Colonel Darnall, agent of the dispossessed Lord Baltimore, had demanded that he put through as a "rush order." The transaction is of importance in this narrative inasmuch as in the entry which records it, one is enabled to catch a glimpse of the first Maryland printer in the actual prosecution of his business,and to observe the straight course which a publicprinter must needs hold to in that day of restricted liberty of the press. At the meeting of the Council on the day named above, there was

"Produced at this Board Coppy of a blanck Warrant which was Given by Coll Darnall & Mr. Smith as a president (sic, precedent) to William Nuthead the Printer in order to print a certain Number of the same, for their Use, the Tenor whereof followed in these words, Vizt. . . . [Here follows in the original a blank land warrant running in the Proprie- tary's name].

On the back of the abovesd Warrant was taken the following Deposition, Vizt.

Octbr I4th 1693.

The Deposition of William Nuthead of St. Maries City Printer Aged Thirty Nine years or thereabouts. This Depont saith that Coll Darnall & Mr. Richard Smith comeing to this Deponts house on the 6th of this instant month would have had him to have printed the within written blank Warrant to the Number of ffive hundred, to be done imediately out

[8]

The Nuthead Press • William and Uriah Nuthead

of hand, and that this Deponent did promiss to finish the same by Twelve of the Clock the next day if in case this Depont had the assistance of a Joyner, which said Joyner did the Wooden VVorke and was paid for the same in Money; afterwards the said Coll Darnall & Mr. Richard Smith came again to this Deponts house and Required him to perform his promiss, to which this Depont made Answer that the Press & Letters were none of his and therefore could not complye therewith without Order, and that the said Coll Darnall & Mr. Smith were pressing & Urgent for this Deponts printing the said Warrants, but this Depon- ent did not print the same and further saith not. . . .

Whereupon it was Ordered by advice in Councill, that the Printer hereafter presume to print noething but blank bills & Bonds, without leave from his Exncy or the further Order of this Board."1

It is not perfectly clear what Nuthead meant by his disclaimer of owner- ship of the "press and letters," unless it be that he intended to convey to his importunate clients the idea that his equipment was theoretically the property of the government as long as he continued to use it under a gov- ernment license. Later it will be brought out that, unlike many of the colo- nial pioneers of typography, he was the actual owner of his press, and that at his death it passed as personal property into the possession of his widow. The importance of his deposition, however, lies not in any question of the ownership of the press, but in the testimony which it bears to the fact that there was in Maryland in 1693 a printing press in such customary use that demands might be made upon it for work "to be done immediately out of hand," and that such service under normal circumstances might be ren- dered.

In April of this year 1693, William Nuthead and two others were named in a warrant which directed them to search the lodging room and closet of Sir Thomas Lawrence for certain papers which they were ordered to seize, seal in a bag and bring straightway to the Governor for perusal. In so far as the record indicates, the issue involved had nothing to do with the story of Nuthead's life as a printer; it is likely that he was named for this duty simply because of a probable familiarity with the papers which the Gover- nor wished to examine. Doubtless our printer man was thankful that he was not the person designated to make the search of the baronet's pockets which was ordered at the same time.2 In October of the year 1694, William Nuthead was one of the signers of the petition addressed to the Governor by the citizens of St. Mary's, protesting against the removal of the capital from its ancient site to the settlement on the Severn which later was to be known as Annapolis.3 In the act of the September session of 1694 for paying

1 Council Proceedings, October 14, 1693, Archives of Maryland, 20: 33 and 34.

2 Council Proceedings, April 8, 1693, Archives of Maryland, 8: 501. JU. H. J., October 13, 1694, Archives of Maryland, 19: 75.

<^[ History of Printing in (Colonial ^h^ary land

the public charge of the Province, Nuthead, in seven separate payments, was allowed, all told, six thousand eight hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco.1 In this session also the Rev. Peregrine Coney had been desired by the Council to have printed the fast-day sermon which he had preached on September 26th.2 It is evident that not only did Nuthead, as the French say, "exist," but as well that he occupied a position of some importance in the life of the colony.

NUTHEAD'S DEATH AND THE INVENTORY OF HIS ESTATE William Nuthead died in his forty-first year, a few months after he had set his name to the St. Mary's "remonstrance." The exact date of his death has not been discovered, but on the seventh of February 1694/95, Dinah Nuthead appeared before the Prerogative Court, stated that her husband had died intestate and requested that she be appointed administratrix of his estate.3 One of her sureties in the bond of two hundred pounds sterling which she was required to give was John Coode, the leader of the Protes- tant Revolution, a personage whom we must regard, in spite of the evil name which he left behind him, as one of the first patrons of the press in Maryland.

The inventory of Nuthead's business and personal property, dated April 2, 1 695, makes sad reading.4 The value of his personalty was only six pounds and nineteen shillings, a small amount even in that day of primitive living. On his books, however, there stood accounts in the names of some sixty persons who owed him various sums ranging from thirty pounds to three thousand pounds of tobacco, so that the total amount due the estate was nearly twenty-four thousand pounds of the current medium. 6Of the amount named, about nine thousand pounds of tobacco was secured by bills and bonds from ten persons who were then connected with the government, or who a year or two earlier had been employed in some one of the several capacities of county sheriff", member of Assembly, justice of a county court or government clerk. In this inventory Nuthead was described as "of the Citty of St. Maryes;" it was reserved for Dinah Nuthead, his widow, and a competent woman of business, to transport the printing establishment to the new center of provincial life on the Severn.

1 Acts, Sept.-Oct. 1694, Archives of 'Maryland, 38: 33.

1 Council Proceedings, September 27, 1 694, Archives of Mary land, 19:40. No copy of this sermon has been re- corded. See bibliographical appendix.

8 Testamentary Proceeding}, 1692-94, 15: 171, ms. in Land Office, Annapolis.

* Inventories and Accounts, I3A: 263, ms. in Land Office, Annapolis.

'Tobacco at this time was worth about a penny a pound. Twenty-four thousand pounds of tobacco would have been valued at one hundred pounds sterling. The rapid rise of prices in the last few years makes it difficult to cal- culate the equivalent of this sum in modern money.

[10]

The Nuthead Press - William and 'Dinah Nuthead

There are several items in the Nuthead inventory which are of interest in this narrative. If the "printed papers" which were discovered among his effects had been listed in good bibliographical form, the activities of the first Maryland printer doubtless would have been clearly outlined for us, but having little idea that Nuthead's work in St. Mary's would ever be of interest to posterity, the appraisers contented themselves with only the briefest description of his office file. They were equally terse in recording that they found "In the Printeing house a printing press, Letters & a par- cell of old Lumber," and as cautious as they were terse when they set upon this item the modest valuation of five pounds. An entry of somewhat pathet- ic interest in this short and simple catalogue of a poor man's goods was "one old sorrell horse hardly able to stand valued at ... 5 shillings." It is not improbable that the beast had been brought to this pass through long journeys undertaken by his owner in the hope of collecting those outstand- ing debts.

The fact is significant that Nuthead had on his books at the time of his death sixty or more accounts with individuals of his own county, and of Kent, Cecil and Talbot, for there is no reason to believe that he was at any time engaged in a trade other than that of printing for which these accounts might have been opened; he had no tools, no merchandise, no farm stock; the printing press was the only implement listed among his effects by means of which he might have gained a livelihood, and the general employment of his press in that pioneer country, as indicated by the number and geo- graphical distribution of its patrons, is cause for astonishment. It may be that an explanation of its apparent popularity is to be found in a petition which Thomas Reading, the third Maryland printer, presented to the As- sembly in the year 1706, in the course of which the petitioner prayed that

". . . whereas there hath been a former Ordinance of this House to Mr. W. Bladen and others that had printing Presses in the Province obliging all Clerks, Commissarys, Sheriffs, and other officers to make use of printed Blanks [that ordinance] may be renewed and set- tled on your Petitioner."1

It is likely that Nuthead, in no less degree than his successors in Mary- land, carried on a lively business in printing the legal and mercantile forms in daily use in the Province. In this day he would be considered the veriest "job printer," but such as he was, he deserves commemoration as having been the pioneer of printing in Virginia and Maryland, the first individual to practise the art of typography in any colony south of Massachusetts.

*L. H. J., April 8, 1706, Archives of Maryland, 26: 577. As Bladen and Reading began printing in Annapolis in the year 1700, the phrase "others that had printing Presses in the Province" must refer either to William and

[II]

<zA History of Printing in Colonial <3xCary land

A NEW CHRONOLOGY OF AMERICAN PRINTING

If one might assume that the payment to Nutheadof five thousand five hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco in October 1686 had been made for services rendered by him throughout the previous twelve months, it would be possible to set the year 1685 as marking the inaugural of printing in Maryland, in which case the typographic beginnings of that province would be coeval with those of Pennsylvania. Indeed it is likely that, find- ing his press under the gubernatorial interdiction in Virginia in the year 1683, Nuthead had come immediately to Maryland, so that although the first occurrence of his name in the records of Lord Baltimore's colony was in the Act of 1686, yet it is possible that in the future there may be found documents to show that his art had an even earlier origin there than the year in which its initiator was first mentioned.

If the facts relating to the operations of the Nuthead press in Virginia and Maryland be accepted at the value which has been attached to them here, it appears at once that the received chronology of American printing has suffered alteration. In that case the order in which presses were estab- lished in the several English colonies would read, as to the first five of them, as follows: Massachusetts, I638;1 Virginia, i682;2 Pennsylvania, i685;3 Maryland, 1 686 ;4 New York, 1693. 5

The order of priority as suggested in this chronology gives to Virginia the position which Isaiah Thomas conceded to it in the appendix to his first edition, and it claims for Maryland the place to which itseems to be en titled by the testimony of its records.

DINAH NUTHEAD AND THE FIRST ANNAPOLIS PRESS Dinah Nuthead, the widow of William, was a woman of admirable cour- age. A few months after the death of her husband, she removed from St. Mary's to Anne Arundel County, whither, some months before, the gov- ernment had preceded her. It is nowhere expressly stated that she carried with her the printing press which had come to her at William Nuthead's death, but it seems unreasonable to believe otherwise in the light of certain events which are now about to be related. Entirely without education, not

Dinah Nuthead, or to some other printers working in the Province before that year. There is not, however, the slightest trace remaining of any other Maryland printers of this period except the Nutheads.

^oden, R. F., The Cambridge Printers, /6jS-/6^2. N. Y., 1905, p. n.

2 Ante. Thomas, ist cd., 2: 544; also Thomas 2d ed., i : 331 and 332.

3Hildeburn, C. S. R., A Century of Printing, The Issues of the Press in Pennsylvania, 1 685-1^84. 2 v. Phila. 1885.

* Ante. Even if the year 1689 with its printed "Address" be taken as Maryland's inaugural year, the relative order of this list is not disturbed.

*Hildeburn, C. S. R., Sketches of Printers and Printing in Colonial New York. N. Y., 1895.

The Nuthead Press • William and 'Dinah Nuthead

well provided with money, she yet made plans to carry on a business in which some knowledge of letters and a certain amount of capital is usually regarded as indispensable. She was shrewd enough to realize, however, that if she were successful in rinding a journeyman printer to conduct her es- tablishment, the possession of that rare article, a printing press, would surely provide a decent maintenance for herself and her two children. Boldly she made the venture.

On May 5, 1 696, more than a year after her husband's death, "Dinah Nut- head's Petition for License to Print was read and referred to the House that if they have nothing to Object her Paper might be Granted provided she give Security for the same."1 Eight days later her petition was read to the delegates, and the House expressed its willingness that she should have leave to print if his Excellency pleased.2 Evidently the Governor offered no objection, for on the next day the persons described as "Dinah Nuthead of Ann Arundell County Widow, Robert Carvile and William Taylard of St. Maries County Gentn" gave bond to the Governor to the amount of one hundred pounds lawful money of England for the good behavior of Dinah f Nuthead in the operation of her press. The instrument continues as follows:

"Now the Condition of this Obligation is such that if the said Dinah Nuthead shall exer- cise and Imploy her printing press and letters to noe other use than for the printing of blank bills bonds writts warrants of Attorney Letters of Admrcon and other like blanks as above- sd nor Suffer any other person to make use thereof any otherwise than aforesd Unless by a particular Lycense from his Exncy the Governor first had and obtained And further shall save harmless and indempnifye his sd Exncy the Governor from any Damage that may hereafter Ensue by the said Dinah Nuthead misapplying or Suffering to be misapplyed the aforesd Printing press or letters otherwise than to the true intent & meaning before ex- pressed, Then this Obligation to be Voyd or else to Remain in full force and Virtue."3

This fearsome instrument for the protection of the Province against the evils of indiscriminate printing was signed by certain witnesses, by the two bondsmen and by the principal, who, as one observes, was compelled to make her mark instead of signing her name to the document, a disability under which she labored to the end of her days. Clearly Dinah Nuthead herself could not have intended to act as the compositor in the establish- ment which she had brought up from St. Mary's to the new seat of govern- ment at Annapolis.

For how long a period Dinah operated her "press and letters" in Annap- olis, it has been impossible to determine. No imprints bearing her name have been recorded, but it is quite possible that in addition to the blank forms

*U. H. J., May 5, 1696, Archives of Maryland, 19: 306.

*L. H. J., May 13, 1696, Archives of Maryland, 19: 370.

'Council Proceedings, May 14, 1696, Archives of Maryland, 20: 449.

[13]

zA History of Printing in (Colonial -Maryland

which comprised a large part of the printing output of the day and place, there issued from her press a sermon by the Reverend Peregrine Coney, a clergyman whose discourses seem to have met with the approval of the dele- gates on the several occasions of their delivery. It has been seen that dur- ing the life of William Nuthead, this reverend gentleman had been requested to have printed a fast-day sermon, delivered by him before the Assembly. Again on May 13, 1695, in the interval between William's death and the re-establishment of the press by Dinah, Mr. Coney was returned thanks by the House for his fast-day sermon,1 but doubtless for the reason that there was no press in operation in Maryland at that time, he was not asked to have his discourse printed. One year later, however, three days after Dinah had petitioned for leave to print, the Upper House ordered that "Mr. Couey (sic) be desired to Print his Sermon preached yesterday,"2 an action which was concurred in by the delegates on the following day. The discovery of a copy of this sermon or of any other imprint from Dinah Nutheac's press would be an event of importance in American typographical history, inas- much as it would constitute the first known American imprint from a press conducted by a woman.

No further references to Dinah Nuthead's activities are to be found in the Assembly proceedings, a circumstance from which one must conclude that the Nuthead press of Annapolis had ceased operations or even had been removed from the Province. It may be that Dinah had employed her press for other purposes than those described in the bond, with the result that she had been prohibited its use; or it may be that, illiterate herself, she had been unable to procure for the conduct of her establishment that rare bird in the colonies, a journeyman printer, and in consequence had been compelled to give over entirely her venture into a difficult and uncertain business. The probability that it was just at this time, however, that she married a second husband must not be overlooked in seeking for the cause of her withdrawal from the business of printing.

The date of Dinah Nuthead's second marriage is uncertain, but some- time before the month of December 1 700, she married one Manus Devoran of Anne Arundel County, who dying in this month left his personalty to his daughter Catherine, and to his children-in-law, that is his step-children, William and Susan Nuthead.3 His wife and executrix submitted her account

1 L. H. J., May 13, 1695, Archives of Maryland, 19: 178, where date is incorrectly given as i8th.

1U. H. J., May 8, 1696, Archives of Maryland, 19: 313, 316 and 362. This sermon also is recorded in Ethan Allen's Ms. List of Works by Maryland Clergymen, in the Maryland Diocesan Library, but Dr. Allen had seen no copy.

3 Maryland Calendar of Wills, 2: 210.

[Hi

The Nuthead Press • William and 'Dinah Nuthead

under the name of Dinah Devoran.1 In later years Dinah married again. Her third husband was "Sebastian Oley of Annarund'l County a German born," as he was described in an act of naturalization of 1702.

In spite of the fact that this woman whom we knew first as Dinah Nut- head was unable to sign her name, she seems to have made her way to a position of respect in the community.WilliamTaylard, a man of some promi- nence in the Province, had sufficient confidence in her character and ability to act as bondsman for her behavior and later to accept the guardianship of her children;2 but as even more striking evidence of her worth is to be remembered the fact that in a day when women were few in public life, she had been able to secure from the Governor and Assembly of Maryland per- mission to operate a printing press in the service of the Province. As far as is known she was the first woman in English America to conduct or to at- tempt to conduct a printing establishment, the forerunner in this trade of Anne Catharine Green, Sarah Updike, Clementina Rind and Mary God- dard,who nearly a century later in Maryland and elsewhere carried on such establishments with notable success. It is a matter for regret that no more was heard of Dinah Nuthead's printing activities after the recording of her bond for good behavior in the conduct of her press.

A SUMMARY OF THE EVIDENCE FOR A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PRESS IN MARYLAND

In the foregoing pages of this chapter there has been set forth evidence, in such amount as it has been possible to collect, with the object of demon- strating the seventeenth-century origin of printing in Maryland. An exam- ination shows that the following facts have been brought out by this evi- dence; namely, that from 1686 to 1695 there lived in St. Mary's City, the old capital of the Province, one William Nuthead, who was several times designated as "Printer" in contemporary documents; that as early as 1686, "William Nutthead, Printer," was in the pay of the government; that after his death, a printing press and a font of letters were listed in the inventory of this Nuthead's personalty; that in the colophon of an important Mary- land political pamphlet, printed in London in 1689, William Nuthead of St. Mary's was specifically named as its original printer; that there exists

1 Inventories and Accounts, 21: 190. March, 1701. Ms. in Land Office, Annapolis.

2 Deeds, Anne Arundel County, Liber W. T. No. 2, p. 684. Ms. in Court House, Annapolis. Indenture between Dinah Oely (sic) of Anne Arundel County, Widow, and William Taylard, Gentleman, trustee of William Nut- head, Susannah Nuthead and Sebastian Oely, children of the "sd Dinah Oely lately called Dinah Devoran." Sebastian Oley, the elder, died in 1707 (Maryland Calendar of Wills, 3: 85), leaving in addition to his wife and executrix, this son Sebastian and a daughter Margaret, who as she is not mentioned in the above indenture may have been Oley's child by a former wife

[15]

iA History of Printing in

a printed broadside, attested officially as a true copy of an Address of the Maryland Assembly, which, its colophon asserts, was printed in Maryland during the period when William Nuthead was resident in its capital; that a Maryland Council minute has been preserved which records a discussion of the propriety of Nuthead's action in printing or promising to print cer- tain warrants, and in which the future limits of his printing activity were prescribed by the councillors; that in his deposition read before this body, Nuthead confessed to having promised to print five hundred warrants by noon of the day following the receipt of the order; and, finally, that after his death in 1695, Nuthead's widow asked and received permission to op- erate a printing press in the Province, presumably that press which a few months before had been listed in her late husband's inventory. In view of these facts, it seems permissible to affirm that the generally accepted chro- nology of American printing should be corrected by placing the beginning of Maryland typographical activity in the year 1686 when Nuthead first was entered on the public pay roll rather than with the coming of William Parks to Annapolis in 1726. That the forty years by which this change in chronology extends the printing annals of Lord Baltimore's province were not barren of interest for the student of American typographical history, the pages which follow will make clear.

[16]

CHAPTER TWO

William ^Bladen, ^Publisher , and his 'Printer, Thomas Reading—

The ^Bray Sermon ofzAnnapolis, IJOO —

The ISody of Laws ofijoo

N SUCH of the northern colonies as had printing presses available during the closing years of the seventeenth cen- tury, there were printed with fair regularity the annual session laws of the assemblies, and, occasionally, bodies of compiled laws. Nothing of this sort, however, seems even to have been contemplated in Maryland until the year 1695, when, doubtless on the initiative of the new

•governor, Francis Nicholson, zealous always in intellectual and educational

matters, the Upper House proposed to the delegates,

"That when the house have compiled such a Body of Laws as they think may be the Standing body of Laws of the Province that they then imploy Some able Lawyer in Eng- land to digest them and put them into better Language, and So have them returned in again for perusall and approbation of the whole Assembly & afterwards to Send them back in Ordr to procure the Royall Assent to the Same and have them printed."1

At this time in the colony the only form in which the body of law existed was in the several collections of manuscript session laws in the possession of the counties and the government. The disadvantages to court and people of this arrangement were perfectly understood by everyone, but for some reason no action was taken by the Lower House on the remedial suggestion proposed by the upper chamber, and again, in May 1697, their Honors re- turned to the matter with a recommendation "That a former proposall about haveing the lawes digested into better Language by some able Lawyer in England be considered anew and is again recommended from the board."2 This time the Lower House took formal action by referring the matter to a standing committee,3 but as nothing was heard of it afterwards, it may be assumed that the committee buried the proposal deep beneath its accumu- lation of business.

1 U. H. J., October 15, 1695, Archives of Maryland, 19:231. 2U. H. J., May 28, 1697, Archives of Maryland, 19: 511. SU. H. J., May 31, 1697, Archives of Maryland, 19: 517.

[17]

<^A History of Printing in Colonial zJtCary land

MR. WILLIAM BLADEN PROPOSES TO ESTABLISH A PRESS

In the period intervening between the two recommendations, however, William Bladen, then clerk of the Lower House, had made a proposal which was to result eventually in the printing of the compiled laws, and in the establishment of the typographic art upon a stable basis in the Province. On October i, 1696, the burgesses made the following representation to the Upper House:

"Upon proposall of William Bladen Clerk of this House that a printing press would be of Great Advantage to this province for printing the Laws made every Sessions &c and that he the said Bladen at his own proper cost and charges would send for such press with the Appurtenances provided his Excellency the Governor would give him Leave to make use of the same this House are of opinion that the same will be of Great advantage to this Province & humbly desire his Excellency will be pleased to Give leave to the said Bladen to make use thereof when arrived according to his proposal."1

Immediately the recommendation of the Lower House as expressed in this message was approved, provided the petitioner should give "security according to his Majesty's Royal Instructions to his Excellency."2

From the phrasing of Bladen's proposal to the Assembly one acquires the impression that he intended tosend outside of the Province for his printing equipment, a necessity which would have existed only if Dinah Nuthead had sold her press, or if it had become too old and worn for use. Whatever the case may have been with regard to Dinah's equipment, however, the sense of Bladen's words makes it manifest that her printing office had closed its doors within five months of its establishment. Lacking the opportunity to purchase her plant for any reason, almost certainly Bladen would have been forced to send to England for his press and letters, and even there, he would have experienced difficulty in procuring decent fonts of type. The event will show that from whatever source he obtained his plant, he was compelled in the end to satisfy himself with a second-hand equipment where- of the types and furniture were notably worn and broken.

At the time of his proposal to the Assembly, William Bladen was a youth of three and twenty years of age, but he was then the same industrious and versatile man that he continued to be throughout his life in the Province. Born in 1673 °f a well-known Yorkshire family, he came to Maryland some-

'U. H. J., October 2, 1696, Archives of Maryland, 19: 466.

1 These instructions to Nicholson, dated March 8, 1694 (Archives of Maryland, 23: 549), were composed in the usual terms in which instructions regarding printing were transmitted to colonial governors at this time. See ante, instructions to Lord Howard of Effingham in 1690, and Copley's instructions of August 26, 1691 (Archives of Maryland, 8: 279): "And forasmuch as great inconveniences may arise by the Liberty of Printing within our Province of Maryland, you are to provide by all necessary Orders that no person use any Press for printing upon any occasion whatsoever, without your speciall License first obtained."

[18]

William Bladen Publisher and his Printer Thomas Reading

time before 1692, in which year he was employed by the Lower House in making a transcript of the laws and in other clerical work of the session. In the year 1 694 he signed the remonstrance of the citizens of St. Mary's against the removal of the capital. He assumed prominence in public affairs in 1695 as Clerk of the Lower House, a position which he held until he became Clerk of the Upper House in 1697, in which capacity he served the Province until four years before his death in 1718. He was Collector of the Port and Dis- trict of Annapolis in 1697, Clerk of the Prerogative Court in 1699, Secre- tary of Maryland in 1701, Attorney-General of Maryland in 1707, Architect of the State House, 1704 to 1708, and Commissary-General of the Province in 1714. He held office also as an alderman of Annapolis in 1708, and sev- eral times served as vestryman of St. Anne's Parish. In the year 1696, he married Anne, daughter of Garrett Van Swearingen, by whom he had two children. One of these was Anne, who married the Hon. Benjamin Tasker of Annapolis, and the other was that Thomas Bladen who lived promi- nently not only in Maryland, of which he was Governor from 1742 to 1747, but as well in England, where at a later period he sat in the House of Com- • mons as member for the Borough of Old Sarum.1

It was characteristic of Bladen's enterprise that he should have perceived the advantage both to himself and to the Province in the importation of a press which should be capable of larger undertakings than those which form- erly had been entrusted to the Nutheads. From the beginning he proposed to perform ambitious tasks, although in the first notice that we have of the press after its establishment in the colony, the character of the work sug- gested for it differed in no particular from that which Dinah Nuthead had been licensed to undertake four years earlier. It should be understood that Bladen was not a printer; he was the entrepreneur only, and he brought in with his press a practical printer, who was without doubt that Thomas Reading of whom we shall hear a great deal as this relation proceeds. An entry in the copy of the Lower House Journal which was transmitted to the Board of Trade, omitted in the Maryland original, informs us that on September 30, 1696, it was resolved that if Mr. Bladen were successful in obtaining a printer and a press, he should have the sole benefit of their operations, and the Council was asked to concur in that resolution for the encouragement of his designs.2 During the first years of the venture, although the name of Thomas Reading appeared alone on the imprints,

1 "The Bladen Family," by Christopher Johnston, Maryland Historical Magazine, 5: 297; Arc hives of Maryland, passim; Vestry Proceedings, St. Anne's Parish, in Maryland Historical Magazine, vols. 6-10; article "Maryland Gleanings; Sidelights on Maryland History," by Hester Dorsey Richardson, in the Baltimore Sun, May 29, 1904.

2 Cal. State Papers, A. fcf W. I., 1696, No. 268, p. 155.

[19]

THE

NECESSITY

OF AN EARLY

REL IG IQN

j/"- fy B E I N O A Sj^.

SERMON

Preach'd the $th. of May Before The

HONOURABLE

ASSEMBLY OF

MARYLAND

By r H 0 MAS BRAT D. D.

ANNAPOLIS Printed By Order of the ASSEMBLY By Tho: Readivg, For Evan Jones Book feller, Anno Domini 1700.

PLATE II. Seepage xiii.

William ^Bladen Publisher and his Printer 'Thomas Reading

Bladen accepted the responsibility of the press, and also, doubtless, what- ever profits accrued to its operation above a salary or royalty paid to the printer. Exactly what were the relations, however, between Bladen and Reading is not known, but whatever may have been the arrangement under which they worked, it seems to have been altered as early as the year 1704, for then and afterwards Reading was spoken of as public printer and Bladen was mentioned no longer in connection with the business of the establish- ent. It will be seen later, that although in partnership and alone Reading sed for thirteen years the press which Bladen had set up in Annapolis, yet the ownership of it remained with Bladen throughout the entire period.

It was nearly four years after Bladen had been given permission to bring in a printing press that, in the month of May 1700, he announced himself to the Assembly as ready for business. On May 4th, the Council sent down to the Lower House the following recommendation:

"The peticon of Wm. Bladen haveing been here read and considered this Board findeing that the Petr has been at great charge and trouble in procureing the Press, Letters, Papers, Ink and Printer Etc. wee doe recommend the same to the house for their consideration and encouragement and that for Promotion thereof an Ordinance pass that after the loth day ,of September next noe other writts be made use of but such as shalbe printed (Save only Speciall Writts wherein are varyous recitalls) and All Bayle bonds, Letters Testamenry, Letters of Admistracon Citacons summonses &ca be printed and none other made use of they being allways to be had vizt

The Writts Citations and Summons's at one penny or one li Tobo per peece And the Lres Testamenry Admon Bayle bonds &ca at Two pence or two pounds of tobbo per peece."1

This recommendation of the Council was assented to by the House, and it was

". . . ordered accordingly provided the Petr give sufficient Caution to his Excy not to printe any other matter or thing but what Shalbe first lycensed by his Excy the Govr or some other p'son that shalbe by him appointed."2

BRAY'S "NECESSITY OF AN EARLY RELIGION" ANNAPOLIS, 1700

That it was not the intention of the Assembly to permit the usefulness of Bladen's press to be limited to such humble service as the printing of blank forms and legal papers appears from further reference to it during the remaining days of the session. On May 5th, the Rev. Thomas Bray, D.D., the Bishop of London's commissary for Maryland, preached before the Assembly a sermon which so pleased the delegates that a few days later it was ordered intheHouse"that Doctor Bray be returned thanks from this

*L. H. J., May 6, 1700, Archives of Maryland, 24: 60. 2L. H. J., May 6, 1700, Archives of Maryland, 24: 60.

[21]

aA History of Printing in £olonial<^ftCaryland

house for his exct Sermon of that text Remember thy Creator in the days of thy Youth and Acquainte him that this house desires the same may be printed."1 In the possession of the Maryland Historical Society there is preserved an unique copy of a publication which, as far as has been recorded, is the earliest Maryland imprint of which a copy remains in America. Its title-page reads as follows:

The | Necessity | of an Early | Religion | being a | Sermon | Preach'd the 5th. of May Before the | Honourable | Assembly of | Maryland | By Thomas Bray D. D. | Annapolis Printed by Order of the | Assembly By Tho: Reading, For Evan Jones Book-| seller, Anno Domini lyoo.]1

A photographic reproduction of the title-page of this first recorded issue of the Bladen-Reading press is shown on page 20. The evidence which it presents of the general inferiority of the press which Bladen had set up with great pains and expense is supplemented by the occurrence through- out the text of broken letters, and of repeated indications of the employ- ment of worn and irregular chases. These defects in equipment and a most notable carelessness in proof reading characterize so much of the work of this press as to constitute an aid in the identification of its issues.

THE FIRST EDITION OF THE MARYLAND LAWS, ANNAPOLIS, 1700

Although the Bray sermon is the first specimen of the Bladen-Reading press of which a copy remains, it is probable that it was not the first im- portant issue of the new establishment, for in this same session of 1700, two days before the delegates had taken action in regard to Dr. Bray's dis- course, when the bill for religion had been read the third time and assented to, it was "Resolved that the same Act be forthwith printed and that one of them be ordered for every parish in the pvince."3 In the absence of a copy of this act bearing the Annapolis imprint it is impossible to assert that the resolution of the House was complied with, but the fact that the delegates had begun immediately to requisition the services of the new press indicates that they appreciated fully its value in the conduct of public bus- iness.

Two days after theprinting of theActof Establishmenthad been ordered Bladen proposed a publication transcending it in interest when he sug- gested to the delegates:

"That if the house are desirous the body of Laws should be printed soe that every person

1 L. H. J., May 9, 1700, Archives of Maryland, 24: 82.

* On the verso of the title-page occurs substantially the same order of Assembly as that which has been quoted, signed "Tho: Smithson Speaker."

3L. H. J., May 7, 1700, Archives of Maryland, 24: 67.

William ^Bladen Publisher and his Printer Thomas Reading

might easily have them in their houses without being troubled to goe to the County Court house to have recourse thereto — That the house made (sic) an Order for the printeing thereof and that every County be Obliged to take one faire Coppy endorsed and Titled to be bound up handsomly and that for the encouragement of the undertaker each County pay him therefore 2000 Ibs of Tobo upon delivery the said booke of Laws."1

In the same document Bladen proposed to build a prison for the Prov- ince, and in conclusion added piously, "All which will be readily undertaken and with the blessing of God Carefully accomplished by yor most humble Servant to command W. Bladen." Planter, clerk, architect and publisher — this W. Bladen was a valuable citizen in a community such as Maryland was at this time.

Bladen's proposal to print the body of laws was timely. In the year 1699 the Assembly had passed an "Act Ascertaining the Laws of this Province," by the terms of which were repealed all laws which had been made there- tofore except those of that session, and selected ones of other sessions men- tioned in an annexed schedule. This Act had been disallowed by the King for specific reasons, and because in general the advisers of his Majesty had disapproved of legislation whereby, as it was explained later, "the vallidity of all the Laws of the Province, are . . . made to depend upon this one Single act, whereas Each of them ought to have been Enacted Separately."2 Ac- cordingly, in the following year, the Assembly changed a specifically named law in the schedule to which his Majesty had objected, that is, the Act for Religion, but in framing a new ascertaining act, disregarded the general ground of his veto, and proceeded on May 9, 1700, to pass an "Act for Re- pealing certaine Laws in this Province and Confirmeing others,"3 a piece of legislation which differed only in small details from its predecessor of 1699, to which, as a matter of legislative method, his Majesty had taken exception. It was on the day that this law was sent to the Governor for sig- nature that Bladen had proposed to the House that he be given permission to print the body of law of the Province, and the delegates believing that body of law to have been determined finally by their recent enactment, granted his petition and ordered that

"Mr. Bladen according to his proposall have liberty to printe the body of the Law of this Province if so his Excy shall seem meet And it is likewise unanimously resolved by this house that upon Mr. Bladen's delivery of one Printed body of the said Laws to each re- spective County Court within this province for his encouragement Shall have allowd him Two Thousand pounds of tobo in each respective County as aforesaid."4

1 L. H. J., May 9, 1700, Archives of Maryland, 24: 83. 2L. H. J., April 27, 1704, Archives of Maryland, 24: 371.

3L. H. J., May 9, 1700, also "Acts" of 1700, Archives of Maryland, 24: 78 and 104.

4L. H. J., May 9, 1700, Archives of Maryland, 24: 84, where the phrase "his encouragement" reads "this en- couragement."

iA History of Printing in Colonia

The project was now carried out with diligence. The book was set, printed and distributed among the counties within one year following its authori- zation, for in May 1 701, we find a reference to it which leaves us in no doubt as to these facts and as to certain of its features. On May lyth Bladen was summoned to the Lower House and told by the Speaker "of the many Erata's Comitted in printing the body of Laws." Whereupon, the record continues,

"it was required by the house tht he cause the Erata's to be fourthwith printed and sent into the severall Countys. To which he readyly concurred and promised to gett the same forthwith printed and sent out . . ,MI

THE UNIQUE COPY OF THE "LAWS" OF 1700 IN THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

There has been preserved in the Library of Congress a volume which the bibliographers of that institution have identified as the collection of laws which has been described here as having been printed on the Bladen-Read- ing press of Annapolis in the year 1700. Unfortunately the title-page of this unique copy has disappeared, so that one is compelled to turn to the evi- dence of circumstance to verify the attribution. Briefly summarizing the preceding pages, the circumstances related in them are found to be these:

In the year 1700 William Bladen established a press and a printer in An- napolis for the purpose of printing laws and other governmental matters.

In the session of May 1700, in answer to his petition,William Bladen was given permission by the Assembly to print a body of Maryland laws.

In the session of May 1701 William Bladen was ordered by the Assem- bly to have printed and distributed throughout the counties a list of errata committed "in printing the body of laws."

Keeping these facts in mind one takes up a volume of Maryland laws in the Library of Congress and finds that it contains a dedication "to my Hon- oured and Ingenious Friend Mr. William Bladen at the [Port] of Annap- olis," and this personage is complimented by the unknown editor for his cleverness in having devised so excellent a scheme for the benefit of the Province and of himself as the printing and publication of a body of laws at a price sufficiently cheap to enable all persons to purchase a copy of the volume containing it;2 and further that the laws which make up the collec- tion comprise the body of Maryland laws confirmed by the Assembly on the same day that Bladen was given permission to print the laws of the Province, together with the additional laws passed in that session; and fi-

*L. H. J., May 17, 1701, Archives of Maryland, 24: 198.

2 Archives of Maryland, 38: 427, gives as much of the "Dedication" as remains decipherable in the Library of Congress copy.

[24]

William ^Bladen Publisher and his Printer Thomas Reading

nally that a comparison of the typographical features of this volume with those of certain other known issues of the Annapolis press brings out an identity in the type faces and a similarity in style, chiefly in faults of press- work and imposition, which indicate with some degree of certainty that the same printer, working with the same poor press and appurtenances was re- sponsible for all of them.1

So skittish a jade is Fame that this important collection of Maryland laws, having served its three or four years of usefulness, passed into such a degree of oblivion that in Bacon's day, sixty odd years after its publica- tion, the very memory of it had been lost. In the enumeration of collections of Maryland laws which occurs in the Preface to Bacon's Laws of Mary- land^ this edition of the year 1700 is not mentioned, and a later collection of 1707 is referred to by the learned compiler as the first printed edition of the laws of the Province.2 For once, however, Bacon is found nodding at his task; the edition of 1700, as will now be shown, was well known in the ear- lier decades of the century.3

In the year 1 704 there was published in London An Abridgement of the Laws in Force and Use in Her Majesty's Plantations^ a work which has for us in this connection a definite bibliographical interest, for in its section devoted to Maryland the abridgements of the various laws of that province are accom- panied by references to an unnamed collection of Maryland laws whereof the page numbers are identical with those of the Library of Congress volume which has been described.

The work was known and used also by Nicholas Trott in the compila- tion of his "Laws of the Plantations," London ijii,6 for in calling atten- tion to the connection here noticed between the "Abridgement" of 1704 and

1 A description of the Library of Congress volume is given in the bibliographical appendix attached to this nar- rative, under the year 1700. It should be said that in affirming a positive result to a typographical comparison of this volume with other issues of Reading's press, the author is giving his own opinion only. He has not been able to bring the various examples of this press together for the examination of an expert. It is to be hoped that the Library of Congress authorities will some day replace the preservative paper with which the leaves of the volume are covered by the material now used in that institution for preservative purposes. A more satisfactory examination will then be possible.

2 Laws of Maryland at Large, by Thomas Bacon. Annapolis, 1765.

3 A single reference has been found in the Assembly journal which seems to point to the use by the House and other departments of the government of this edition of compiled laws of 1700. At the session of September 18, 1704, "Mr. John Taylor orderd to goe up to some of the offices for a printed body of laws. He returns and says that there is none perfect but what belongs to the County Court office and that Mr. Bordley the Clk refused to send it." (Whereupon Mr. Bordley was brought to the bar of the House and promptly adjudged guilty of con- tempt. He made his submission and it was) "Ordered he bring downe the body of law belonging to the County. Which he did and delivered it to Mr. Speaker and upon his Submission he was discharged." (.Archives of Mary- land, 16: 156).

4 Title and description given in bibliographical appendix under year 1704.

5 Title and description given in bibliographical appendix under year 1721.

*A History of Printing in Colonial '^Maryland

an earlier edition of Maryland laws, that ingenious codifier makes the fol- lowing assertion: "As to the Laws of Maryland," wrote Mr. Trott,

"I have by me three editions in print: The first was that edition out of which that Abridgement of the Laws of Maryland was made which is in the Abridgement of the Laws of the Plantations, printed at London in 1704."

That Mr. Justice Trott was speaking literally "by the book" is rendered certain when one discovers that his own references by act and page to this work, which he described as the first edition of the Laws of Maryland, likewise correspond to the pages of the volume in the Library of Congress, designated here theBladen-Reading collection of Maryland laws, published at Annapolis, by authority, in the year 1700.

WILLIAM BLADEN RETIRES FROM THE PUBLISHING BUSINESS

A brief remark will be permitted as to the amount of the subsidy which Bladen received from the Province for his publication of the laws. If the terms of the House resolution were complied with as intended, he was paid twenty-two thousand pounds of tobacco by the eleven counties, a sum which, rating tobacco at a penny a pound, would have been the equivalent of about ninety-one pounds sterling. In an address of the Assembly to the Governor in the year lyoi,1 it was stated that with one year and another, the average wage of the laboring man in the Province was two thousand pounds of tobacco, so that when one adds to the amount of Bladen's sub- sidy for the work the money which he must have received from its sale to individuals, it seems at first thought that his proprietorship of the press must have been a profitable undertaking in comparison with current wages and salaries, but when the expense of its establishment, the cost of paper and the wages or shares which he paid Reading are deducted, one feels that his enterprise must have turned out after all to be more for the public bene- fit than for his own profit.

It is probable that Bladen himself reasoned the case in this fashion, for we hear no more of him as a publisher after that day in May, 1701, when he agreed to have printed and sent out a list of the typographical errors committed in the body of laws of 1700. The printing activities of our pio- neer American publisher seem to have ceased entirely with almost his earli- est venture, and it is to his journeyman or partner, Thomas Reading, that we turn now in the continuance of our study of the press in Maryland.

JU. H. J., March 24, 1701/1702. Archives of Maryland, 24: 227. It is very difficult at this time to render these sums into modern equivalents. The cash equivalent of Bladen's payment would probably be represented by a sum at least five times as large as it was in the year 1700.

[26]

CHAPTER THREE

'Thomas Reading, 'Public 'Printer— The Keith Sermon, Annapolis, f?OJ— The Collected Laws ofifof—The 'Begin- nings of the ^Annual Session Laws

URING the years which followed the publication of that collection of laws which has been described in the fore- going chapter of this narrative as the Bladen-Reading edition of 1 700, it is probable that the presswhichThomas Reading was operating at Annapolis continued, whether with or without Bladen's participation is not known, to take care of the public business of the Province, and oc- casionally even to issue a pamphlet of a political or religious character. Only one Annapolis imprint, however, has been recorded between the years 1700 and 1704. The title of this work was The Power of the Gospel, in the Conver- sion of Sinners. In a sermon preached at Annapolis, in Maryland, By George Keith . . . July the 4th. Its imprint read, "Printed and are to be sold by Thomas Reading, at the Sign of the George. Anno Domini MDCCIII."

The place of publication of this sermon is not given in the imprint, but there remains evidence of a conclusive and interesting character to testify to its Annapolis origin. In Keith's Journal,1 under the date of July 4, 1703, the preacher himself writes these words:

"I preached at Annapolis, on I. Thess. i. 5. and had a large Auditory well affected; my Sermon at the request of a worthy Person who heard it, was printed at Annapolis, mostly at his Charge; and Copies of it sent by him, to many parts of the Country. It is Bound up with other Printed Sermons and Tracts, in the Book abovementioned, which I presented to the Honourable Society, soon after my arrival into England."

The author of these words and of the sermon which they refer to was that George Keith who has been remembered as a factious participant in the religious controversies of the colonies at this period. Formerly a Quaker schoolmaster of Philadelphia, at this time a clergyman of the Church of England, he had been the instigator and center, a decade before, of a con-

1 Keith, George, A Journal of Travels from New-Hampshire to Carat uck, on the Continent of North America. London, 1706; p. 66. See p. 39 in reprint in Collections of Protestant Episcopal Historical Society, New York, 1851.

tA History of Printing in Colonial <Mary land

troversy which well-nigh had shattered the foundation of the Pennsylvania hierarchy. Since that time he had kept the various colonial presses hot with the issue of his pamphlets. Because of his advocacy of Keith, William Brad- ford, the first Philadelphia printer, had been compelled to remove his press to New York, where he had continued occasionally to issue pamphlets by or in support of his former friend. In controverting Keith's attacks on the Puritans, Cotton Mather and others had made free use of the presses of the New England colonies. The Maryland press alone had not been called upon either by Keith or by his enemies, but at this time, having secured ordina- tion in England and returned hitherwith John Talbot as the representative of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, it befell that he became a patron of the only press in the colonies hitherto not req- uisitioned in the service of his controversial zeal.

THOMAS READING BECOMES PUBLIC PRINTER AND TAKES A WIFE

In the year 1704 we come again into touch with Thomas Reading in the pages of the Provincial records. In the September session of that year, it was moved in the Lower House that Reading print the Governor's speech, delivered at the opening of the session, and in response, it was

". . . resolved he be lycensd so to doe likewise proposd that he may be constituted pub- liq printer to print all laws and other publiq matters Which being debated this house Re- solves he be constituted printer first Giving bond with Securety to behave himselfe in that Office."1

The next recorded action by Reading is his marriage on December n, 1705, to the "Widdow Gittins."2 Evidently the journeyman printer whom Bladen had brought to the Province was sufficiently well satisfied with his prospects there to wish to settle himself comfortably in its capital.

THE BODY OF LAWS OF ANNAPOLIS, 1707

In April of the year 1 706, there was read in the Lower House "The humble Petition of Thomas Reading constituted Printer of the Province of Mary- land," in which that personage prayed that their Honors would

". . . order the Laws of this Province to be printed and this House would give him Encouragement for the speedy finishing the same; and That your Honours would please to settle some Annual Salary for his Support and Encouragement for which he will be obliged

. ]., September 12, 1704, Archives of Maryland, 26: 129. In this same session (cf. U. H. J., September 25 and October a, 1 704) the sermons preached at the opening of the new St. Anne's church, in the morning and after- noon respectively, by the Rev. Messrs. Wooten and Cockshute, were ordered printed, both Houses concurring. No copies of these sermons have been recorded. See bibliographical appendix.

2 "Births, Marriages and Deaths" in "Parish Register," St. Anne's Parish, Anne Arundel County. Copy in the Maryland Historical Society.

[28]

Thomas Reading and the Issues of his Press

to print all publick Matters as Speeches, Answers, Votes & Proclamations &c as your Hon- ours please to direct.

And further whereas there hath been a former Ordinance of this House to Mr. W. Bladen and others that had printing Presses in the Province obliging all Clerks, Commis- sarys, Sheriffs, and other Officers to make use of printed Blanks [that ordinance] may be renewed and settled on your Petitioner.

And that there is a small House upon Wapping Wharf built by the Public, but at pres- ent of no use, therefore prays that the same be gran ted him . . ."x

A discussion took place on the reading of this petition from the printer as to "what encouragement might be sufficient to give him for his expedi- tious Printing the Body of the Laws of this Province," and it was deter- mined finally to allow the petitioner twenty shillings a copy from each county for the proposed body of laws, and to give him permission to offer copies for sale at a rate not to exceed twelve shillings each. Furthermore, he was to be allowed "for what other Acts shall be passed in any future Assemblys . . . the same in Proportion to the present Body of the Laws."2 Reading agreed to these terms at the time, but a few days later he returned and asked a more generous allowance for the body of laws, receiving in response •to his appeal an additional ten shillings from each county and from the "country."3 The delegates also proposed to him an annual rental of twelve pence, payable each Lady Day, for the unused house on Wapping Wharf, and made a further agreement with him whereby he was to copy the body of laws for the press for the sum of two thousand pounds of tobacco.4

The necessity for a new edition of the laws had arisen at this time because in the year 1703 Queen Anne had ordered that "all Laws now in force be revised and considered" for the reason that the entire Provincial code de- pended upon the single "ascertaining act" of the year 1 6^g.& At various times since the confirming act of 1700 the Province had felt some uneasiness as to the validity of its statutes, and in the year 1701 the Governor had asked committees of the two Houses to meet together for the purpose of consid- ering the question of revision. The conferees had gone carefully into the history of the existing body, and after consideration had declared that it would be "soone enugh to alter the present Estabmt when his Matys dis-

1 L. H. J., April 8, 1706, Archives of Maryland, 26: 576-577.

2L. H. J., April 8, 1706, Archives of Maryland, 26: 577.

8L. H. J., April 17, 1706, Archives of Maryland, 26: 605. See also p. 585, where Mr. Thomas Bordley was named "to examine & correct the Press in Printing the Laws," and allowed 3,000 Ibs. of tobacco for the service.

4 L. H. J., April 8, 1706, Archives of Maryland, 26: 577.

6L. H. J., April 27, 1704, Archives of Maryland, 24: 371. The instructions of the Board of Trade appended to this entry refer to the ascertaining act of 1699, but L. H. J., May 9, 1701, shows clearly that the Province was using the code adopted by the confirming act of May 1700. In all essentials the two were the same, save for the difference remarked on in the preceding chapter.

*A History of Printing in Colonial <3&aryland

like is knowne and not before."1 Three years passed after this event, during which the Province was administered under the code of 1700, but in the year 1704 the royal mandate arrived and in September the Assembly was called for the purpose of revising and reenacting the entire body of law, a task which it straightway accomplished to the royal satisfaction.

Nearly two years passed after the revision had been completed before Reading proposed, as has been related, that he be allowed to print the re- vised statutes, and his proposals having been accepted, another year came and went before he began to carry them out. In the March session of 1707 he appeared in the House and in response to the demand of the delegates as to why the body of laws had not been printed in accordance with his con tract, he declared that he "was and is always ready to do the same when this House will advise what Laws shall be in the Body and so withdrew."1 Whereupon it was resolved, "That all the publick Laws and Reviving Acts be printed at large and all Persons who have Interest in any private Laws be at the Charge of printing them otherwise the Title of such private Acts is sufficient to be printed."3 The book as planned on this occasion, contain- ing the entire existing body of Maryland laws, was set and printed imme- ' diately, and that it appeared in this same year, we have the word of Mr. Justice Trott, who as will be seen, made use of it in his compilation of the "Laws of the Plantations."

It is the collection which has been described in the foregoing paragraphs that Bacon referred to incorrectly in his Preface as the first printed Mary- land collection of laws. "The first edition," he wrote, "contains the Laws from 1704 to 1707, both inclusive, to which are added several Acts of As- sembly formerly made, declared to be in force, . . . The Copy in my Posses- sion (the Only One I have ever seen) has lost its Title Page, so that I cannot ascertain when or where it was Printed." We are indebted again to Mr. Justice Trott, who it will be remembered, wrote more than forty years be- fore Bacon published his work, for a more definite reference to this collec- tion of the Maryland laws. "So the Laws of Maryland being again enacted," he wrote in the Preface to his own compilation, "were collected into one volume, under the Title of All the Laws of Maryland now in force: And by order of the General Assembly were printed at Annapolis in Maryland in the year ijoj."4 This reference is particularly happy in that Mr. Trott has

1 L. H, J., May 9, 1701, Archives of Maryland, 24: 163. 2L. H. J., April 14, 1707, Archives of Maryland, 27: 125. 3L. H. J., April 14, 1707, Archives of Maryland, 27: 125.

4Trott, N., Laws of the British Plantations. London, 1721. The collection of Maryland laws here described is not recorded in Evans or in Sabin, nor does it appear in Lee, J. W. M., Hand-list of Maryland Laws. Baltimore,

[30]

Thomas Reading and the Issues of his Press

given us what seems to be a transcript of the title-page of a volume which he asserted that he had by him at the time of writing.

As in the case of the body of Maryland law printed by Reading in the i year 1700, there remains, as far as is known, only one copy of this edition which he printed in 1707. This copy, as did also that which Bacon had in his possession, lacks its title-page,1 but its contents and a note by the printer at the foot of its last page of text enable one to establish its identity with the work described in the foregoing paragraphs and given by Trott the title and imprint of All the Laws of Maryland Now inForce, Annapolis, 1707. The volume contains, under separate session headings, the acts of the session of April 1704, the revised body of September 1704, and the acts of Decem- ber 1704, May 1705, April 1706 and March 1707, as well as "Several Acts of Assembly formerly made declared to be in force." In this feature it an- swers the description given by Bacon and Trott, and the following note, on page 1 13 of the compilation, completes the information necessary to its identification as an Annapolis imprint of Thomas Reading:

"The Reader is hereby desired to take Notice that in the Assembly made Auno (sic) '1706 the Pages are Folio'd 123 &c. by reason the Laws made that Sessions were ordered to be first Printed so that they could not be truly ascertained, and instead thereof add 80 8 1 82 &c. otherwise the Index will be false.

These are to give Notice to all Gentlemen &c. that are any ways interested in private Acts of Assembly, that they may have them printed at Inrge (sic, for 'large') : And may likewise be furnished with blank Bills, Bonds, Writts Bills of Exchange, Bills of Lading, I Administration Bonds, Testamentary Bonds, Letters of Administration, Letters Testa- mentary, Warrants for Appraisers &c. with any other Matters printed at reasonable Rates by Thomas Reading living in the Town and Port of Annapolis."

In spite of the absence of a title-page, there seems no reason, biblio- j graphical or historical, why the copy of laws which has been referred to

I 1878, although the title has been added in Mr. Lee's handwriting to the manuscript of his work preserved in the I Maryland Historical Society. Mr. Lee had not seen a copy, however, nor any record of one beyond that con- i| tained in Trott's preface.

1 The copy of All the Laws of Maryland Now in Force, referred to in these pages, is believed to be unique. It belonged originally to Robert Goldsborough, Esq. of "Ashby," Talbot County, a practising attorney and a mem- ber of the Lower House at the time of its publication, whose notes are preserved on the margins. It has remained I in the possession of his descendants ever since, and has now been deposited for safe keeping in the Peabody Library of Baltimore. As long ago as 1765 Bacon spoke of the copy in his possession as being the only one he had met with, and since his reference to it no one has recorded having seen a copy of this edition. About ten years ago a descendant of Robert Goldsborough showed the "Ashby" copy to certain students of Maryland history, but I no note was made of its contents, nor of its ownership, so that it had disappeared entirely from general knowledge I when it was offered to the author for examination and description. During the years that he was employed on I the period of Maryland legislation covered by this collection, Bacon was living at Dover in Talbot County not I many miles from "Ashby" where, it is likely, he was a frequent visitor. It is not improbable that the "Ashby" I copy, which "has lost its title-page" also, was that which he refers to as being in his possession and the only copy I known to him, but if this be true it is difficult to understand his ignorance of its place of publication, a fact which [ he might easily have learned from the printer's note at the foot of page 1 13, present in the "Ashby" copy.

[31]

tnd hindrtneetH« the party which procarcJ «e1}ia > naopciraacc oftbe taidWitnefs or Wirne l«s rhefa'm fevatji *»u at to bctoc irry fa grieved again t the o reader 01- o fendtriby All >n o*"D.iSc 'iill Ptsiacor afermu: ^jjny ot rheir Msjeftys Courts of IccorJ m tins ftoviace, wkereia no EJoya Ptotedjo.i ii^cr af La* co be allowed.

X» /<f7 for the OatLnoiiig tf Rkhatd Clark of Arm- Arunde! County.

WHEREAS i Jappears to tbis General Affemblv upon Oath chat diet* haiheen a tyerf Wicked and TrealonaWe Confpiracy began & carry 'd on by ft/ei<W Cttff oF Jlm-Ariin4ti County and his Aocernpjices, to fejze upoo the Magazine, »nd his Exceilcn y the Gavernour, aaJ overturn her MajeUys GovcMment and to bring iKtHeacben lodiajx1; to- gether with the Confpirrors to cut offend exrif pate h« inhabitants of this Pravioce ; and for. jtfmuch as the Paid C/ar/t flics Irojn Juftice and dares nor venture himfelfupon a &r Tryil.

B« it therefore Enacted by die Queens mart Excellsnc Majeftyby and wrth rfce Advice and' Confeat of her Majcfiys Governour Council a"nd Aflcmbfy of this Province a id theihirthority of the feme, that un'efs the feid KicbarJ Clark do within t\venty Days after the End of (his pf« feat ScfEon of A Icmdjy farrender himfelf to his Excellency tlie Govsrnour, or to any on e o/ her Mzjertys honourable Coancll in order to be try ed for hisTreafon afo?efeid, thattbenth« faid Riclwtt Clark by Force and Vertus of this Aft ftall be Outlawed, andthaJi forfeit his Conds and Chattels Lands and Tenements as an Outlawed Psrfoa, aa/ waot of Pioceft er a- ry other legal Ptoceodiiigs in any wife aetwi

f / if / s.

hereby JefireJw talte Notice ttar (n t!t« AflemWymide Ju*» ijoK the Pages are Folio'd i t 3 &'. hyre«fon the Laws made thuSe lions w«rs ordereci to be firit Printed fo that they could not be truly afc«camed, and inflcad thereof add 80 8i 81 &<. o- tberwife the Index wiU be falfc.

Thefe are to gire Notice to ajl Gentlemen &i. thar arc any ways totereftcdin private A<5s ofAfTcmbly, ihat they may h^ve them primed at Inrge : Ana m»y iikewifebe furoi'hed with blank B^lls, Bonds, Writrs Bi'lsof Exchange, Bills of Lading, Adminirtratioo Bonds, Tefta- rneiitary Bonds, l^rten of Adminifiration, Letters Tettamentary, Watants fo/ Ap fffe. with any ether Matters pdaced ac tsafooibl* Rates by Ihnmm Rctdii^ Jjying Towa sud Port ot^fufelis:

PLATE III. See page xiii.

Thomas Reading and the Issues of his Press

should not be ascribed to the Annapolis press of Thomas Reading, an issue }f the year 1707, and it will be so entered with a full description in the bib- iographical appendix to this narrative.

THE BEGINNING OF THE PRINTED SESSION LAWS

Throughout the years that followed Reading's appointment to the office }f public printer in 1704, there are to be found in the journals of the Lower Bouse several significant references to his printing activities. It has been said generally, even by persons familiar with Maryland historical bibliog- •aphy, that the printing of the session laws of the Province began with Parks in the year 1726, but to indicate the incompleteness of the current knowledge on this subject, one need point only to the copies of Maryland session laws for the year 1719,* printed by Andrew Bradford of Philadel- phia, which are preserved in the Library of Congress and in the Peabody Library of Baltimore. The truth is, indeed, that the printing of session laws began in Maryland more than a decade before even this isolated number of the series issued from the Pennsylvania press.

. It has been shown earlier in this chapter that in the resolution by which the House had recognized Reading as public printer, specific mention had been made of his obligation "to print all laws and other publiq matters."2 That this was not a form of words, that in accordance with the intention of the Assembly, Reading began at this session to print the laws then enacted, is believed to be indicated by the several entries which are now to be cited from the Lower House journal, and by the bibliographical testimony which will be adduced as a complement to that evidence.

In the year 1706, when Reading petitioned for permission to print the body of laws and asked for the settlement of an annual salary upon him for the printing of "all publick Matters as Speeches, Answers, Votes & Proclamations &c.," the House resolved upon a rate of payment to be made him "for what other Acts" should be "passed in any future Assemblys," and ordered that he be "allowed for the same in Proportion to the present Body of the Laws."3 In the following year,April 15, 1707, it was"Resolved That all the Laws Enacted this Session be printed pursuant to a former Order of the House. And the Printer to be allowed for the same according as before contracted for."4 Finally in the petition which Reading presented to the Assembly in the year 1709, and in the action taken upon it by the

1 See following chapter and bibliographical appendix.

*L. H. J., September 12, 1704, Archives of Maryland, 26: 129.

*L. H. J., April 8, 1706, Archives of Maryland, 26: 577.

4L. H. J., April 15, 1707, Archives oj Maryland, 27: 128 (improperly headed April 13).

[33]

^4 History of Printing in Colonial tJxCary land

delegates, there seems to be evidence that printed session laws had been the rule since the appointment of a public printer in 1704, and further, that the Assembly intended the continuance of this good custom.

In the following paragraphs, Reading's petition of 1709 and the action taken upon it by the House are given in full:

"To the Honble Robert Bradley and the other Gentl. Delegates now sitting in the House of Assembly. The Humble Petition of Thomas Reading

Humbly sheweth to your Honours; That inasmuch as the Assembly in the Year of our Lord 1704 thought meet to constitute your Petitioner Printer as may to your Honours ap- pear upon the then Journal, and at the same Time ordered that your Petitioner should be yearly considered by the several Counties for the Annual Laws of every Assembly the which are all ready to be produced to your Honours:1 Now may it please your Honours your Peers Allowance is so small, together with the Inconveniencies that attend the same (as has already been demonstrated to yr Honrs) render yr Petrs Employment insignificant and not sufficient to maintain him.

Therefore your Petitioner most humbly prays yr Honrs will be pleased to take his Case into yr Honrs Consideration and make him what further Allowance your Honours shall think fit and likewise that your Honours will be pleased to make especial Order that the Secretary permit your Petitioner to have the Laws Enacted this Session so convenient to copy in Order for the Press, as to your Honours most wise Judgment may seem most meth- odical. And your Petitioner as in Duty bound shall ever pray &ta

Which being read and fully debated, Ordered the same be thus indorsed Vizt

By the House of Delegates Novem'r nth 1709

Upon reading the within Petition it is Resolved by the House that Mr Secretary per- mit and allow Thomas Reading the Petitioner immediately after this Session to take a Copy of the Laws now Enacted in Order that for Conveniency of the Province he by all convenient Speed print the same and that the said Reading get the great Seal affixed to each Body at the several Counties Charge and transmit a particular Body to each County for which he is to be allowed and paid by each County for the same and every other Session for the future 500 Ib Tobo a Body and that he prepare and deliver to the Clerk of the House one printed Copy for the Use of the Assembly and another for the Provincial Court to be paid for by the Public. Which is ordered to be done by all convenient Speed."2

From the documentary indications which have been presented here, one is able to construct a hypothetical series of printed Maryland session laws from 1704 to 1708 inclusive, and there the matter might rest in unsatisfac- tory state were it not that the actual sheets of one number of this series re- main to render more nearly certain the supposition that the whole of it once existed. In the collection of Maryland laws printed in Annapolis by Thomas Reading in the year 1707, described in this narrative as All the Laws of Maryland Now in Force, the following pagination and signature sequence are to be observed: B-U,2 X,1 pp. 1-78; B-C,2 D,1 pp. i-io; Aa-

1 These italics do not appear in the original, but the phrase is deemed to possess such importance as to render this method of emphasizing it desirable.

2 L. H. J., November 1 1, 1709, Archives of Maryland, 27: 461 and 462.

[34]

^Thomas Reading and the Issues of his Press

Ee,2 pp. 95-1 14. The gatherings standing isolated in the volume, indicated here by the symbols, B-C,2 D,1 pp. i-io, and bearing at the foot of page 10 the word "Finis," its only occurrence in the volume save when it was used at the conclusion, contain the laws for the April session of 1706. It will be recalled that in a note on the last page of the compiled laws of 1707, Read- ing desired his readers to take notice that the laws of 1706 were "folio'd I 2 3 &c. by reason the Laws made that Sessions were ordered to be first printed so that they [i. e. the page numbers] could not be truly ascertained." The explanation of this erratic paging is to be found in the printer's de- sire to save time and the labor of composition. It has been shown here that in April 1706 he had contracted with the Assembly for an edition of collected laws and for editions of session laws for all future assemblies. Di- rected, it seems, to proceed with the printing and publication of the laws of that session before setting the collected laws, he had determined to run off from the forms which he proceeded to make up for this current issue, a number of extra sheets to be laid aside and held for inclusion in the larger work in contemplation. As his alternative to this course, he had the pros- pect of resetting later the matter of the entire session, for with the small fonts which the colonial printer owned, he could not have kept this matter in type until it was needed. Accordingly he ran off his extra sheets of the laws of 1706, stored them, and a year later, bound them in the "collection" exactly as they had been printed originally for the separate edition of the session laws, retaining their paging, i-io, their signatures, B-D, and the word "Finis" on their last page, leaving out only their original signature "A," which was doubtless the title-page and preliminary matter of the sep- arate edition. If this reasoning is correct, it seems that the testimony of the documents as to the existence of a series of printed Maryland session laws earlier than heretofore has been known is well supported by the bib- liographical evidence which the discovery of the volume of collected laws of 1707 has made it possible to adduce.1

There exists further evidence that Reading fulfilled the contract which he made with the Assembly when in 1704 he was appointed by that body "to print all laws and other publiq matters." Almost as this narrative goes to press there have appeared in the auction room two broadside sheets,2 printed by Thomas Reading of Annapolis in the year 1708, containing the Governor's "Speech" and the "Answer" of the November Assembly of that

1 For a further discussion of this item, see bibliographical appendix under 1706 and 1707.

2 See bibliographical appendix for a description of these two broadsides, unrecorded until they appeared as item No. 452 in catalogue No. 1546 of the Anderson Galleries, New York. They were sold January n, 1921, to Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach for $1260.

C3S]

zA History of Printing in Colonial <Jxtary land

year. When one learns that Thomas Reading was printing minor legislative documents in 1708, one assumes fairly that he was not neglecting the more important work for which his services had been engaged; that is, the print- ing of the acts passed at each session of Assembly.

Reference to the petition which William Bladen presented when in 1696 he asked permission of the Assembly to establish a press in the Province reminds us that it was his intention to make use of that press in printing the "laws made every Session," and although neither copy of session laws as printed by him nor reference to such a copy remains, yet it is quite pos- sible that the series of Maryland printed session laws began with that which we have called the Bladen-Reading press at the time of its establishment in the year 1700. It is not intended, however, to assume upon these con- jectural grounds that the printing of the annual session laws began in that year, but it is believed that the evidence which has been brought forward here indicates their beginning in and continuance for several years after 1704, the year in which Reading was constituted public printer and in which it was ordered "that he should be yearly considered by the several counties for the Annual Laws of every Assembly." In consideration of the facts here presented; namely, that there have been discovered the sheets of the ses- sion laws of 1706, which Reading printed at the behest of that year's As- sembly, and that the House journals give strong presumptive evidence that all of the laws from 1704 to 1708 were printed, and that there exist actual copies of the Governor's "Speech" and the Assembly's "Answer" for No- vember 1708, one concludes that Reading was stating a plain truth when in speaking to the delegates of the "Annual Laws of every Assembly" he used the words "the which are all ready to be produced to your Honours." It would be difficult to construe his words as meaning anything except that he had printed the annual session laws from September 1704 to November 1708. The sheets of April 1706 having been discovered, there remain to be unearthed and recorded copies of the separate editions of September and December 1704, May 1705, March 1707, September and November 1708, and without doubt of all later sessions to the year of Reading's death in

READING'S DEATH AND A SUMMARY OF HIS SERVICES TO THE PROVINCE

The next that we hear of Reading in the Assembly records is that he is dead.1 We are able to credit him with having printed two collections of com-

*U. H. J., November 14, 1713, Archives of Maryland, 29: 252. A discussion in the Upper House as to the best means to be employed in publishing the laws for the counties, whether on poor parchment or good paper, begins

[36]

Thomas Reading and the Issues of his Press

piled laws, the session laws for at least five years, and a number of smaller works of a legislative and religious character. In the light of these perform- ances he is seen as no small figure in the literary history of a province in which he labored at important tasks from the year 1700 until his death thirteen years later. If one were to judge the quality of his handiwork from ;he Bray and Keith sermons and from the Body of Laws of 1700, the ver- dict would form a severe reflection on his skill as a printer, but, fortunately, at least one example of his later work, the collected laws of 1707, was of a :haracter sufficiently impressive and dignified to demand commendation Df his craftsmanship from the most critical observer. This is true in spite of the fact that his proof reading and spelling, things not connected with the mechanics of his trade, remained poor to the end.

The property which Thomas Reading left at his death was not large.The evaluation of his goods and chattels amounted to seventeen pounds and a few odd pence, and although the appraisers listed among his effects several horses, two wigs, ten pairs of "eastern Shore Shoes," and a partly built house, they made no mention of a press or of any other appliances of the printing trade.1 Five years later, however, when William Bladen's estate was settled, there was listed among its many items and valued at six pounds, "an old Printing Press & Some Letters."2 The presence of these articles among Bladen's effects accounts for their absence from Reading's poor store of possessions. The fact that the printing press was included in the inven- tory of property which Bladen held in Anne Arundel County, as distin- guished from his St. Mary's and Kent Island holdings, has a significance which will be referred to in a later chapter.

If one may judge from the inventories of their personal estates, the first

printers of Maryland seem not to have prospered notably in their trade.

Nuthead died possessed of little save a press, some promissory notes and a

broken-kneed horse; Reading left behind him several horses and some old

: clothes, but neither printing press nor other tool of his vocation.

! with the preamble "Whereas the Printer is dead." The "Register" of St. Anne's Parish (copy in the Maryland Historical Society) records the burial of one "Thomas Redding," doubtless our printer, on May 9, 1713. Read- ing's inventory is dated August 18, 1713.

^•Inventories and Accounts, 366: 176, August 18, 1713. Ms. in Land Office, Annapolis. 2 Inventories, i: 324, November 27, 1718. Ms. in Land Office, Annapolis.

[37]

I

CHAPTER FOUR

Evan Jones, Bookseller— The Jones-Bradford Laws of I J 1 8—

The London Edition of ^(Cary land Laws of 1723 —

Trot? s Laws of the ^Plantations

LITERARY history of colonial Maryland would have to deal with a community peculiarly sterile in the produc- tion of original works of literature. The reasons for this condition are so many that it would be unwise to institute a general discussion of them here. It is well to recall, how- ever, that in Pennsylvania and in the northern colonies the conflict of religious sects and of sects within sects kept the presses busy with the publication of controversial matter, while in Mary- land the firm establishment of the Church of England discouraged not only the publication of works of controversy but controversy itself. Until the years immediately preceding the American Revolution, religious specula- tion was static in Maryland, a circumstance, we may believe, which did not make for unhappiness among the people. Politics was always a matter of interest to the Marylanders, but except in connection with certain im- portant contentions which will be noticed later, discussion of affairs of state rarely took the form of the printed word. There remained, in general, as matter for the employment of the press only the publication of the laws and legislative proceedings, and upon these, as the framework of Maryland printing history, attention is mainly centered throughout the early part of the period under discussion. Because of this close relationship between the printing of Maryland laws and the history of Maryland printing, the pres- ent chapter has importance in our narrative in spite of the fact that it has nothing to do directly with the story of any Maryland press.

The death of Thomas Reading in the summer of 1713 left the Province without a printer. In these early years of the century, printers in search of employment were infrequently met with in the colonies. New York had only one establishment at this time, and Pennsylvania, after the passage of sev- eral years in which it had been without the services of a printer, had lately induced Andrew Bradford to set up his press in the city where his father

[39]

<^A History of Printing in Colonial iJtCaryland

had been the first practitioner of typography. It was because of this scarcity of trained printers in the colonies that, during the five years which followed Reading's death, the Maryland laws were transcribed upon parchment or good paper and distributed among the counties, where they were published by the primitive method of voice proclamation. In the year 1718, however, a way was found out of the position of embarrassment in which the colony had been placed by the cessation of Reading's press. In this year Evan Jones of Annapolis, a Welshman and the Provincial man-of-all-work, made pro- posals to the Assembly in regard to the printing of its laws which resulted in the publication of a work of great importance in Maryland legal history. The reference to Evan Jones on the title-page of the Bray "Sermon" of Annapolis, 1700, where he is described as "bookseller," contains the earli- est knowledge that we have of the existence of this individual. There also, for the last time, he was described specifically as "bookseller," but in the years to come he took part frequently in the Provincial business in capaci- ties not essentially different from that of his first description. He seems to have been a ready and cheerful factotum in the public life of Maryland, and the journals of the Assembly evidence the extent of his participation in its affairs. In the year 1704 his Excellency in his address to the Assembly asserted that he had never seen "any publick Buildings left solely to Prov- idence but in Maryland," and straightway "Mr. Evan Jones of this Towne a Sober Person" was engaged at ten pounds a year to look after such of the offices as had been spared by the fire which, earlier in that year, had de- stroyed the State House. In 1708 Jones acted as Clerk of the Upper House for an entire session, and in the November session of 1713 he held the posi- tion of "clerk assistant" of the Lower House. In the year 1713 he was spoken of as Deputy Collector of the Port of Annapolis, and three years later he was promoted to the office of Deputy Collector of the District of the Patux- ent with jurisdiction of the Port of Annapolis. In June 1717 the committee of the Lower House for the repair of public records employed him to be the chief undertaker for examining and transcribing the records at the rate of four pounds of tobacco a "side," a unit of measurement which was to be considered as containing fifteen lines of seven words each. For his faithful performance of this task, Major John Bradford, his brother-in-law,1 gave bond to the amount of one thousand pounds sterling, a sum of such mag-

JThe will of John Bradford of Prince George's County, probated May u, 1726, left certain lands to his sister, Mary Jones, with reversion to her two sons, Evan and John Jones. See Maryland Calendar of Wills, 5: 217. This John Jones seems to have been the second child of Evan and Mary Jones who was given the name "John." In removing the debris after the burning of St. Anne's church in 1858, a tombstone bearing the following inscription was discovered: "Here lyeth the body of John the eldest son of Evan Jones and Mary his wife who dyed the 2d

[40]

aws Printed in Philadelphia and London

nitude in that day and place as to convince one that the colonial Mary- landers regarded the correct transcription of their records as an undertak- ing of importance. In the year 1718 Jones petitioned, unsuccessfully it seems, for the privilege of carrying the mails, and except for the very im- portant service to the colony which is now to be described, little is heard of this busy and intelligent public servant until his death in the month of June I722.1

THE JONES-BRADFORD EDITION OF THE LAWS, PHILADELPHIA, 1718

It was doubtless while Jones was engaged in the tedious employment of transcribing the records of the Province that there occurred to him the idea of the project which it is now time to take account of. On May 9, 1718, he Toposed to the Upper House that he be allowed to print the body of pro- incial law, and their Honours approved the petition and sent it down to the delegates with the following endorsement:

"The within proposall is recommended to the Lower House of Assembly as reasonable !in the Charge and usefull in the Work & to oblige the said Evan Jones to print them upon good Paper and with a fair Letter."2

• When this endorsement was read in the Lower House, Thomas Bordley and John Beale immediately offered

". . . to make a Compleat Colleccon of all the Laws ... in force in an entire Body and to make a perfect Index and proper Marginall Notes throughout the whole for Fifty Pounds."3

Further than this the journal is silent. Thomas Bordley was a leader of the House in the contention as to the force of the English statutes in the ^American colonies, and as the struggle between the delegates and the Pro- prietary interests was now becoming close after years of relative peace on this subject, Bordley was allowing to pass few chances to annoy the gentle- ;tnen of the Upper Chamber. As Evan Jones held with the Lower House in this contention, one is baffled to determine whether in the present instance Bordley's action was a part of his general strategy, or whether he had in view merely the editorial preparation of the copy for Jones's publication. Whatever may be the true interpretation of the incident, however, it forms

of ytber Ano dm 1716 aged two years. (Five lines of Welsh)." See Riley, E. S., Ancient City, p. 76. Evan Jones was a vestryman of St. Anne's Parish from 1709 to 1716. See The Endowment Guild of St. Anne's Parish, by John irt Randall, Annapolis, 1909, and Allen, Ethan, Historical Notices of St. Ann's Parish. Baltimore, 1857.

1 "Births, Marriages and Deaths," in "Parish Register," St. Anne's Parish, Anne Arundel County. Copy in Maryland Historical Society. The foregoing facts relating to Evan Jones's connection with the Provincial govern- ment are to be found in the Lower House journals for the years named.

2 L. H. J., May 9, 1718, Archives of Maryland, 33: 271. It is possible that this petition had been introduced ariginally in the Lower House and passed upon there and that this entry indicates simply the concurrence of the Upper House. Neither clerk seems to have made a complete entry of the transaction.

3L. H. J., May 9, 1718, Archives of Maryland, 33: 272.

<±A History of Printing in

the last reference to Jones's proposal which was entered in the journal of either house. It does not appear from the obviously incomplete record which has been quoted that Jones was given authority to proceed with his publi- cation, but the event shows that he proceeded none the less, and on the title-page of his book, he declared that the compilation had been made by order of the Governor and both Houses of Assembly.

In one sense, the compilation of laws which Jones now presented to the public is the most important collection of the statutes of colonial Maryland. As one of the last acts of her reign Queen Anne had commanded a second revision of the whole body of Maryland law. On April 29, I7I5,1 Governor Hart had communicated to the delegates the royal instructions, and on the seventh of the following month the House had proceeded with the required- revision.2 The body of law determined by the Assembly on this occasion, as McMahon, the historian of the Maryland constitution, wrote many years later, "formed the substratum of the statute law of the Province, even down to the Revolution; and the subsequent legislation of the colony effected no very material alterations in the system of general law then established."3 It was this "system of general law then established" which caused the super- session of the collection of laws published by Reading in 1707 and rendered necessary the new compilation which Jones proposed and carried into effect in the year 1718.

In this book, which was published through the Philadelphia press of An- drew Bradford in the year 1718,* the editor, Evan Jones, found himself in the position of a man who thinks to please all parties, but who in the out- come contrives probably to give universal offence. In his Preface5 he attrib- uted to Governor Hart all the virtues of a paragon among governors; he spoke well of the Proprietary, recently come again into his own, and voiced the most loyal sentiments in regard to Church and King. Moreover, in his opening paragraph, he expressed the mind of the Lower House when he wrote that the Maryland acts "are not expected to speak, but where the General Statutes of England are silent." He continued with the informa- tion that until the publication of this book the statutes had existed only in

1 L. H. J., April 29, 1715, Archives oj Maryland, 30: 105.

2L. H. J., May 7, 1715, Archives of Maryland, 30: 129. In Chapter Five of this narrative reference is made to the part played in John Peter Zenger's trial by the celebrated colonial lawyer, Andrew Hamilton, at one time a resident of Kent County, Maryland. He represented that county in the Maryland Assembly of 1715, and as a member of its committee or, laws doubtless contributed to the success of the notable revision of that year. See Steiner, Bernard C., in Pennsylvania Magazine of History, v. 20.

3 McMahon, J. V. L., An Historical View oj the Government oj Maryland. Baltimore, 1831, p. 282.

4 Description in bibliographical appendix under year 1718. 6 Reprinted, Archives oj Maryland, 38: 429.

tJxCaryland Laws Printed in Philadelphia and London

ill-written manuscripts without indexes, so that "The Laws of the Province lay so obscure, that they were scarcely known to those that were immedi- ately concerned in the Judging of or Pleading by them." He asserted fur- ther that the work had been encouraged by the Assembly, and in the face of his two distinct declarations of this fact, one must conclude that Bacon was mistaken when in later years he said that this edition of the Maryland laws had been published without authority.

Because of the difficulty, experienced often throughout their history, of securing the Proprietary or Royal assent to legislative enactments, the people of Maryland until this time had preferred temporary laws, expiring by their own limitation, so that their legislation, McMahon says, had "assumed the character of a system of expedients." The body of laws adopted in 1715, and now published by Jones in 1718 with all legislation of the intervening years, was the earliest body of permanent general law established in the Province. The service which Jones rendered to the people of Maryland in editing and publishing their first "code" was of such a degree of importance as to entitle him to remembrance. Whether the country party was pleased by his prefatorial reference to those of the Court, and whether the sop which he threw to the former in his remark on the force of the English statutes in Maryland was to the taste of the latter did not, after all, affect the practi- cal value of the printed body of general law which he published for the benefit of all parties in the Province.

THE SESSION LAWS OF 1719

Following his venture as the publisher of the compiled laws of the Prov- ince in the year 1718, Jones made application at the next session of Assem- bly for permission to continue his activity in the publication of its legislative enactments. On June 5, 1719, leave was given him by the Lower House "to print the laws made this Sessions — As also the Governours Speech Answer and the Severall addresses of this Sessions."1 Jones again carried his "copy" to Philadelphia,2 and the session laws for 1719, and the speeches and ad- dresses for that year soon issued from the Bradford press.3 From the cir-

. J., June 5, 1719, Archives of Maryland, 33: 444 and 445.

2 It is regretted that the limits of this work do not permit an extended account of Andrew Bradford, the Phil- adelphia printer who at various times during the ensuing years acted in the capacity, unofficially of course, of public printer of Maryland. A prolific printer and a useful citizen, he is shown in an unfavorable light in the Autobiography of Franklin, who seems in this case to have acted with ingratitude toward one who had befriended him at a time of great need. Isaiah Thomas has a good account of the Bradfords, and other later writers have defended Andrew against the aspersions of Franklin and set him before the world in a more favorable light as man and printer.

3 See bibliographical appendix.

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<tA History of Printing in £olonial Maryland

cumstance that the pagination of these sessionlawsis consecutive with that of the edition of the compiled laws of the previous year, it seems that Jones had in mind the continuance of a series of annual Acts of Assembly to be bound with the body of laws and used as one collection until the passage of years should render necessary another revision and compilation of the whole. That Bradford's work was fairly well done, the copies remaining attest, but that it was not without vexatious errors may be inferred from a passage in the Upper House journal of two years later, when, after discov- ering that they had been bickering with the delegates over a point in one of the acts the sense of which, it eventuated, had been beclouded by a mis- print, their Honours in an ungracious note to the Lower House declared, "We should be Glad you would Provide agt such Grosse mistakes in the Printing for the future."1

During the three sessions which followed this of May 1719 for which, with Evan Jones as intermediary, Andrew Bradford had printed the laws and addresses, these important state papers, almost certainly, were printed by John Peter Zenger, a resident printer to whose Maryland venture a later section of this narrative is devoted. On the departure of this individual from Maryland late in the year 1721, the Province was again without a printer. Once more and for the last time before his death a few months afterwards, the worthy Evan Jones stepped forward to act as the agent for its printing. On February 28, 1 721/22, the Lower House journal records that "Mr. Evan Jones has the liberty of printing the Tobacco laws." No provision was made for the printing of the session laws, but as only one public law was passed at this session and as this was a tobacco law, the neglect explains itself. De- spite the fact that no copy of this law remains, it is probable that it was printed by Bradford at Evan Jones's behest, for other documents of this session found their way into print through the Philadelphia office. One of the reasons given by Governor Calvert for calling this session had been his desire to explain to the Houses his dismissal of Thomas Bordley from his Council. The several addresses to and from the Governor on this and rou- tine matters before the session, Bordley's defense and other pertinent documents were collected and printed under the title of The Speech of his Excellency Coll. Charles Calvert, Governour of the Province of Maryland, to both Houses of Assembly, Feb. 20, 1721.

Unfortunately there remains of this printed collection a single mutilated copy containing only three pages,2 and as none of these is title-page or colo-

JU. H. J., August 5, 1721, Archives o] Maryland, 34: 186. 2 See bibliographical appendix.

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^Maryland Laws Printed in Philadelphia and London

phon it is not possible to assert positively that it was from Bradford's press. The type and typographical ornaments, however, aid in making an attri- bution which one would suspect to be correct from the fact that Evan Jones, who always carried his work to Philadelphia, had been authorized to act as the Provincial printing agent in this session of Assembly. It is likely that the single tobacco law of the session was printed at the same time and by the same printer.

Five years after the publication of the Jones-Bradford collection of 171 8, the Maryland Assembly was called on to consider "The Petition of Andrew Bradford printer praying an Allowance for printing the great Body of Laws which he was Employd to do by Evan Jones Gent deced."1 After a reading, the petition was immediately "rejected for that this House never Employed the petitioner or Ordered any other person to Employ him." Thus we learn that Jones is dead, and that Bradford either had not been paid at all for his work on the laws, or that he considered himself to have been underpaid. The delegates, on their part, clearly considered Mr. Bradford impertinent, but that the Philadelphia printer bore no malice is evidenced by his willing- ness to undertake Maryland work at other times in the not distant future. •

THE BOARD OF TRADE EDITION OF MARYLAND LAWS, LONDON, 1723

In connection with the edition of Maryland laws which Bradford printed for Jones in 1718, it is proper to mention now rather than in its chronologi- cal order a compilation of Maryland statutes which appeared in London in the year 1723, for this later compilation, in spite of its date, contains no acts subsequent to the body of law established in 1715, the same revision of Maryland legislation which had made necessary the Jones-Bradford edi- tion. When the Queen had ordered a revision of Maryland laws in I7i5,she had directed at the same time that the body of law when completed should be engrossed and a copy sent to the Lords Commissioners of Trade. In a footnote to his Preface, Bacon wrote in 1765,

"I have seen (some Time before I left England in the Year 1745) an Edition printed at London, at Lord Baltimore's expence, as I have been informed, for the Use of the Board of Trade, with the Latin Charter prefixed: But could never meet with a copy of it in this Province, nor can I recollect the Date it bears."

In this note Bacon referred doubtless to the edition of 1723 which is now being discussed, a work well known to students of American bibliography and available in several libraries in this country, however vainly he may have sought it in his day. In spite of his supposition that the compilation

1 L. H. J., September 30, 1723, Archives of Maryland, 34: 617. [45]

<^4 History of Printing in Colonial <3tCary land

had been printed at Lord Baltimore's expense, there seems no reason for believing this to be true. The collection bears the royal arms, was printed by the King's printer, and has nei ther dedication nor preface. There is nothing about the book to suggest that Baltimore had been ordered to publish it, and as it contains none of the laws made since the Province had been re- stored to his government, it is more probably the case that the collection had been issued by the Lords of Trade from the engrossed copy sent to them in 1715 as one of that series of colonial laws which they published customarily for the benefit of those in England who were associated in co- lonial business enterprises. Similar publications were printed by Baskett, some of them "by order of the Lords Commissioners of Trade and Planta- tions," for Bermuda and New York in 1719, the Barbadoes in 1721, Mas- sachusetts in 1724 and Virginia in 1727, to name only the most important collections of the series.

This London edition of the laws is a handsome book, well printed on a thick, crisp, white paper. It was printed by John Baskett, who six years before its publication had acquired unpleasant notoriety as the printer of an edition of Holy Writ which has been known ever since as the Vinegar Bible, by reason of the occurrence in its pages of a misprint in one of the gospels which caused the laborers in the vineyard to be alluded to as the laborers in the "vinegar." Because of this and other blunders which it con- tained, it was known to a mocking generation as a "Basket-full of printer's errors," but in spite of its textual imperfections, Dibdin described it as "the most magnificent of the Oxford Bibles." Until Jonas Green had printed Bacon's edition of the laws, Baskett's edition was certainly the most mag- nificent of the Maryland books of statutory law. That it had little use in the colonies is easily explained by the nature of its contents and by its date of publication, for a work published in 1 723 containing no laws passed since 1715 could not be expected to prove useful when even the easily available Jones-Bradford compilation, containing the code of 1715 and subsequent legislation for the three years 1716-1718, so rapidly became out-of-date that the Assembly in 1722 attempted to have printed a second volume con- taining the compiled laws of the intervening years.1

"TROTT'S LAWS OF THE PLANTATIONS," LONDON, 1721

Several times in the course of this narrative grateful reference has been made to a special compilation of colonial laws known familiarly as "Trott's Laws of the Plantations." The Laws oj the British Plantations — relating to

1 See next chapter under the section devoted to Michael Piper and his attempt to establish a press in Maryland.

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s Printed in Philadelphia and London

the Church and the Clergy, Religion and Learning, published in London in 1721, has served a useful purpose to the historians of two centuries as a dependable and direct guide to the matters of which it treats. It contains thirty-one acts at large which were in force in Maryland at the time of its publication. For the greater part, Nicholas Trott, its editor,1 used the Jones- Bradford edition in compiling his section of Maryland religious enactments, giving in addition, however, marginal references to the Reading editions of 1700 and 1707. Useful to the church historian of today, his collection, at the time of its publication, must have been of particular value in England, as well as in those American colonies where the Church of England had been by law established.

As has been said, the foregoing notices of works of Maryland law, printed beyond the limits of the Province, have no direct bearing on the story of the Maryland press, but as these works occupy an important position in the legal bibliography of the colony it is believed that a description of the circumstances of their publication should find place in this narrative.

1 Nicholas Trott was one of the most interesting figures in the colonial panorama. Emigrating to South Caro- lina in 1698, he became chief justice in 1702 and held that office until the anti-proprietary revolution of 1719, a

* revolution precipitated largely by his own injustice and tyranny. It has been said that "However unscrupulous as a politician, corrupt and tyrannical as a judge, Trott was a profound lawyer, a scholar of great learning, and a most laborious and indefatigable worker." It might be added that he was a devout Churchman and deeply read in theology and the Holy Scriptures. In 1736 he published a codification of the laws of South Carolina which has place as one of the most remarkable legal productions of colonial America, and which, printed by Lewis Timothy of Charleston, vies with any work of the first half of the century in typographical excellence. At the

' time of Trott's death in 1740, he was engaged upon an "Explication of the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament." One of his most unpleasant habits was that of further distressing those whom he had condemned to death by addressing to them religious homilies. His remarks to the pirate, Captain Stede Bonnet, remain as the record of his remarkable personality and as the fitting conclusion of one of the most dramatic criminal trials of the colonial era. For a good account of Judge Trott, see McCrady, Edward, The History of South Carolina under the Proprie- tary Government, 1670-1719. N. Y. 1 897, passim.

[47]

CHAPTER FIVE

John 'Peter Zenger, Public 'Printer of ^Maryland— Michael 'Piper

and his ^Abortive 'Press — 'The ^Beginnings of the

"Votes and 'Proceedings" Series

QUESTION which proposes itself for solution at this point in the narrative is that of the part played in Mary- land printing activity by John Peter Zenger, the New York printer, whose trial for seditious libel in the year 1734 established in the American colonies the principle of the freedom of the press. It is a matter of record that for a period of years Zenger lived in Maryland, and it is no less certain that during this residence, at three successive sessions of the Assembly he was employed to print the laws of the Province. From the evidence of circumstance one infers that on two of these occasions, certainly, he actually printed the session laws, but immediately the question arises as to where in Maryland was his press and where are concealed specimens of its production or contemporary references to them other than the orders to print which appear in the journals of Assembly. Beyond presenting a 'statement of the evidence, the following discussion does little for the solu- tion of the problem.

John Peter Zenger, "borne in the uper Palatinate on the Rhine,"1 was brought to this country by his mother in the year 1710, among those refu- gees from the Palatinate whom Queen Anne had removed from a scene of persecution and transported to her American colonies. About thirteen years of age at the time of his arrival in New York, Zenger was soon afterwards apprenticed by his mother to William Bradford, the printer, who in later years was to become his relentless political adversary. Nothing is recorded of him during the customary years of apprenticeship, but at their conclu- sion it seems that he lost little time in seeking a community in which he might set up for himself as a master printer. Old William Bradford would have known that in the absence of a resident printer in Maryland, his son Andrew of Philadelphia had been doing the work of that Province for five

1 Act of Naturalization, Archives of Maryland, 38: 277. [49}

?Jl History of Printing in £olonial<Maryland

years. Possessing this knowledge, it was doubtless he who suggested to Zenger that he take his chances at a living in the southern Province. At any rate, Zenger appeared in Maryland, asking for employment, very soon after the expiration of his articles of apprenticeship. In the April session of Assembly of the year 1720,

"The Petition of John Peter Zenger praying that he may have the Liberty of Printing the Laws for the Severall Countys the Provinciall Court and Upper and Lower house of Assembly was read and

Resolved that the Petitioner have the Liberty of Printing the Laws for the Severall Countys Provinciall Court and a Body for the upper House and another for the Lower House of Assembly and that he bind the severall Bodies for which the Severall Counties and Publick shall pay Seven hundred pounds of Tobacco per Body."1

In transmitting this resolution to the Upper House for its approval, the Clerk of the House of Delegates added a significant sentence, when he wrote the words, "with which we desire your Concurrence Especially Consider- ing it will be a means to promote the Carrying on so necessary a work amongst us." The resolution of the Lower House was concurred in by the Upper Chamber on the same day, and that the delegates had no doubt of the printer's ability to carry out his contract is learned from a later entry in their journal. On April 22d, the last day of the session, to the question of the Upper House as to how much should be paid the Chancellor for tran- scribing the laws, they returned the reply that

"Both Houses of Assembly haveing agreed that John Peter Zenger should print the Laws of Each Sessions for the Severall Countys and Provinciall Courts &c we Apprehend it would be too great a burthen to the Country to pay both the Chancellor and Printer for them."2

Well satisfied with his prospects in Maryland, Zenger applied for citizen- ship in the Province at the next session of Assembly, that of October 1720, when, in response to his petition there was passed "An Act for the natural- ization of John Peter Zenger of Kent County Printer & his Children."3 In the title of this act is contained the only reference that exists to Zenger's place of residence in Maryland, and on the evidence of this description, it has been assumed that at his first coming to the colony he had set up his press in Kent County near Chestertown. The county court records and the records of the Provincial Land Office contain no indication that Zenger took up land in Kent County or elsewhere, and unless he intended to carry on farming in addition to printing, it seems unreasonable that he should have

. J., April 12, 1720, Archives of Maryland, 33: 588, 501-502 2L. H. J., April 22, 1720, Archives of Maryland, 33: 639.

'Bacon's Laws of Maryland, 1720, ch. 18. See also L. H. J., October 20, 1720, Archives of Maryland, 34: 56. The complete text of the act was printed in Archives of Maryland, 38: 277.

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Zenger's <Maryland Venture • The Earliest ^Assembly Proceedings

established himself across the Chesapeake many miles distant from Annap- olis, in which town of course was the source of the greater part of the print- ing business of Maryland. Chestertown was a village at this time, and a small village at that. Surrounding it was an agricultural neighborhood. If Zenger set up his press in this community, he must deliberately have chosen a position of isolation, but the description of him as of Kent County in his act of naturalization is at least a positive piece of evidence that he made such a choice; there is no evidence of any nature whatsoever that he settled in Annapolis, where one would have expected to find him.

It is to be presumed that in the months which had intervened between Zenger's order to print the session laws in April 1720, and the day of his naturalization in October of that year, he had carried out his contract with the Assembly as to the printing and binding of the April acts, for on Octo- ber 2yth, it was resolved by the delegates,

". . . that the Printer be Allowed five hundred pounds of tobacco for the Printing the Laws for the Counties &ca . . . as last Sessions,1 and that Mr. Tasker make Coppys of all the Publick Laws and the heads of all the Private Laws . . . And the said Copys to be Delivered to the Printer the latter End of the next week."2

If Zenger had failed to print the laws of April 1720, it is not likely that in employing him to print those of October 1720, the delegates would have used the phrase "as last Sessions;" nor in the session of August 1721 would they have resolved,

". . . that John Peter Zenger print the Body of Laws this Sessions as usual3 and be Al- lowed five hundred pounds of Tobo per Body. And that John Gould Transcribe a Body of the said Laws from the Originals to be by him Sent to the said Printer; . . ."4

The phrases "as last Sessions" and "as usual" employed in these quota- tions must refer to a series of performances rather than to a series of fail- ures to perform.

In the absence of later references in the Maryland records to Zenger and his work for the Province, it is impossible to assert that he carried out the task imposed upon him by the delegates in August 1721. It is probable, however, that he accepted the contract and completed it as his last im- portant work in Maryland before his return to New York late in 1721 or early in the year 1722, after a Maryland residence of some months less than two years. In the preceding chapter it was pointed out that in the session of February 172 1/22, Evan Jones had been given permission to print the only

1 The omission before these words, italicized by the author, occurs in the original.

1 L. H. J., October 27, 1720, Archives of Maryland, 34: 1 1 1.

* Italics by author.

4L. H. J., August 5, 1721, Archives of Maryland, 34: 255.

[51]

<zA History of Printing in

public law passed by that Assembly, a sufficient indication that Zenger was no longer a resident of the Province. It is known, moreover, that he mar- ried his second wife, Anna Catherina Maul, in New York on August 24, 1722, and that he was made a freeman of the city in the year following his marriage. He formed a partnership about this time with his old master, William Bradford, with whom he printed a book in the Dutch language in the year 1725. In 1726, his name appeared unaccompanied by any other on the imprint of another Dutch book, and from thenceforward, he printed alone in the Dutch, German and English languages. One of his nieces, Eliz- abeth Becker, married Richard Curson or Curzon, the founder of the Ameri- can family of Curzon, so that through her Zenger is associated by ties of blood with a family of importance in Maryland and New York. At his death in 1746, his widow, Anna Catherina Zenger, carried on his press for some years. It was afterwards taken over and continued by John Zenger, his son by his first wife. With the removal of Zenger from Maryland to New York, he passes from the field of activity with which this narrative is concerned. To discuss here the later and more important period of his life would be to extend unduly the length of this relation by the inclusion of matter which has been presented in detail in books and articles which are available to all readers.1

It is evident that the final word remains to be said on the subject of the work of Zenger as a printer in Maryland. The silence of the Kent County records and of the records in the Maryland Land Office together with the absence of a single Maryland imprint bearing his name leave the question of the location of his press as much of a riddle as ever it was. When he ap- plied to the Assembly in April 1720 for permission to print its laws, he was newly come to Maryland as a journeyman not long free of his apprentice-

1 For further biographical details of Zenger and his family see Pleasants, J. Hall, The Curzon Family of New York and Baltimore and Their English Descent. Baltimore, 1919. For a comprehensive treatment of his imprisonment and trial, of the events which led up to this consummation and of its triumphant conclusion for American jour- nalism, read Rutherford, Livingston, John Peter Zenger, Second New York Printer, his Press, his Trial. New York, 1904; Hildeburn, C. R., Sketches of Printers and Printing in Colonial New York. New York, 1895; and the article devoted to him by Isaiah Thomas in his History of Printing in America. He was defended in his trial by Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, who had lived in Kent County, Maryland, shortly before Zenger's residence there. For an interesting discussion of the extent to which this fact influenced Zenger in choosing Hamilton to defend him, see Steiner, Bernard C., "Andrew Hamilton and John Peter Zenger," in vol. 20 of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History. Isaiah Thomas wrote of Zenger that he "was a good workman, and a scholar, but not a correct printer of English." Some of his later biographers, however, are not willing to follow Thomas in his asser- tion that Zenger was a scholar, and it is generally believed that he had been used as a catspaw in the political dispute which resulted in his imprisonment and trial. Thomas relates that during the dispute Zenger gave such jffence to a gentleman of the Council by an article in his newspaper, The New York Weekly Journal, that the irate colonel threatened to lay his stick over the printer. Thereafter Zenger went about his affairs armed with a sword, and the spectacle of a printer so accoutred gave Bradford the opportunity for the exercise of his powers of ridi- cule. The "crafty old sophister," as Franklin named Bradford, took a little more than full advantage of his op- portunity.

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Zenger' s ^Maryland Venture - The Earliest ^Assembly Proceedings

ship. It is not certain that he made his home in Kent County on his first coming into the Province, although he was, it seems, a resident of that county a very few months later. If at this time he had possessed no press of his own, and this would not have been strange in the case of so young a printer, it would have been the natural thing for him to have made his headquar- ters at Annapolis, where originated the important printing business of the Province, and where as well there was to be found until the year 1723 a printing press and its necessary equipment, doubtless the same outfit which two years before his coming had been listed in the inventory of property held in Anne Arundel County by William Bladen. One would have said that here was a hand-made opportunity for a young journeyman beginning business on his own account, but the supposition that he took advantage of the opportunity is rendered doubtful by his description as "of Kent County" and by the wording of the Assembly order of August 1721, in which it was directed that after transcription the laws were promptly "to be ... Sent to the said printer." Would the word "sent" have been used when the transaction involved was simply the turning over of a manuscript to a fellow villager whom the copyist must have seen every day? It is true that in the October session of 1720, under like circumstances, the word "delivered" had been employed in the order, but wherever his shop may have been, it is probable that in this month Zenger was in Annapolis in person, attending to the passage through the Assembly of his act of natu- ralization.

It is upon such evidence as has been adduced that the question of the location of Zenger's press must be argued, and admittedly it is so intangible in character that no decision may be based upon it. The question probably will never be settled until someone discovers a Maryland imprint bearing the name of John Peter Zenger, and it is to be hoped that the discovery will be made by a person in need of the money which a specimen of Zenger's Maryland press would bring at auction.

MR. MICHAEL PIPER, SCHOOLMASTER, AND HIS PRINTING PROPOSALS

With Zenger removed from Maryland, and with Evan Jones four months dead, the Province found itself in difficulties in regard to its printing at the session of Assembly of October 1722. There was not lacking, it is true, an aspirant for the vacant office, but with the best intentions he succeeded but poorly in carrying out his proposals to continue the publication of the laws. This individual was no other than Mr. Michael Piper, master of the Free School of Annapolis, that establishment founded by Governor Nicholson in

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<iA History of Printing in (Colonial ' zJtfary land

1696, known for generations as King William's School, and finally merged with the newly established St. John's College in the year 1786. Nothing of the life of Mr. Piper is of concern in this narrative except the fact that in October 1722, he petitioned the Assembly that he be allowed to print the laws of that session and those to be made thereafter.1 A few days later his petition was granted,2 and it was resolved "that he be printer to this House and that this House will give him all reasonable encouragement from time to time so far as may be consistent with the Justice thereof." Two days later it was provided that Mr. Piper be allowed five pounds currency as his encouragement for collecting, annotating and indexing the laws made since 1718, in order, as the journal says, "that they may be printed as a 2d Volume of the Laws of this Province."3 These projects seem never to have been carried out. A year later the following resolution was passed in the House:

"On a Motion made as to the further Consideration of Michaell Pipers petition last As- sembly relateing to the printing the Laws and Mr. Piper Appearing at the Barr and Al- ledgeing that the press is now at Philadelphia and that he can't print them here at present, It is Resolved that the Chancellor Transcribe the Laws ... as usuall and that the like Encouragement proposed to Mr. Piper Last Sessions be given to the first person that will Erect a printing press at the City of Annapolis."4

The extracts which have been quoted here indicate little except that the Maryland authorities were not apathetic in the matter of printing. One as- sumes, however, from Mr. Piper's case that the old Bladen press must still have been in Annapolis in October 1722, when the schoolmaster proposed to undertake the printing of the provincial laws, and that it was probably sent to Philadelphia8 some time between that date and September 1723. Although Mr. Piper clearly did not print the session laws as he had pro- posed, yet he may have printed on this old press a few smaller and less am- bitious things, such as, for example, the "printed case" of Samuel Cover which was referred to in the Assembly on September 23, 1723. He did not

1L. H. J., October 27, 1722, Archives of Maryland, 34: 445.

2L. H. J., October 30, 1722, Archives of Maryland, 34: 450 and 454.

3L. H. J., November I, 1722, Archives of Maryland, 34: 455.

4L. H. J., September 28, 1723, Archives of Maryland, 34: 613.

6 In Franklin's Autobiography, Everyman ed. p. 33, occurs this description of the printing equipment of Sam- uel Keimer, a printer just arrived in Philadelphia. Franklin writes, "Keimer's printing-house, I found, consisted of an old shatter'd press, and one small, worn-out font of English, ... I endeavor'd to put his press (which he had not yet us'd, and of which he understood nothing) into order fit to be worked with." This was in October 1723. It was on September 28, 1723, that Mr. Piper said to the Maryland delegates, "the press is now at Phila- delphia." Keimer had lately set up in Philadelphia, and Franklin says that in October 1723 he had not yet used his "old shattered press." From this description of the press, and from the correspondence of dates and circum- stances, one hazards the guess, admittedly per saltum, that Keimer had bought the old Bladen-Reading press from the estate of the late William Bladen.

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Zenger s^Caryland Venture • The Earliest ^Assembly Proceedings

print Ephraim Hermann's Copies of some Records &? Depositions Relating to Great Bohemia Mannor lying on Bohemia River in Maryland, which issued from Bradford's press in this year,1 but that means nothing; Bohemia Manor naturally transacted its business with Philadelphia by reason of its geo- graphical position.

Since Reading's death in 1713, the Province had been compelled to rely entirely on Andrew Bradford of Philadelphia for its printing, except for the two years during which Zenger had acted in the capacity of provincial printer. Disappointed now by Piper, they offered inducements to all and any, but even so they were destined to wait for three years before their offer should be taken up by William Parks, one of the great figures in the story of Amer- ican colonial typography.

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE "VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS" SERIES

In a former chapter mention was made of the fact that in the year 1706 Thomas Reading had proposed that a part of his duty to the Province be the printing of "all publick Matters as Speeches, Answers, Votes &c" in addition to the regular publication of the session laws. In this proposal is to be found the first mention of that series of Assembly proceedings which was known to generations of Marylanders as the Votes and Proceedings of the Lower House of the Assembly, and which is published today under the title of Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates of Mary land. Whether Readingwas permitted to carry out his plans in regard to the proceedings of the Assembly is not recorded, and there seem to have been printed no pub- lications of exactly this character until the year 1727, when William Parks began their regular issue. In the year 1723 or 1724, and again in 1725, how- ever, there were printed certain of the debates and proceedings of the As- sembly which have a peculiarinterest for the students of American history, inasmuch as their publication was associated with one of the most import- ant constitutional issues of the colonial period, an issue which was fought over not only in Maryland but as well in several others of the English col- onies of America.

In the sessions of Assembly from 1722 to 1725 there occurred the climax of a struggle, then half a century old in Maryland, in which the Lower House had been striving to secure recognition of the claim that the Englishmen of America came by right of heritage within the jurisdiction of the English statute law, upholding the passionately held belief that in emigrating to a colonial possession of England their fathers had not forfeited for themselves

1 Hughes, T. A., History of the Society of Jesus in North America. Documents, v. i, pt. i, p. 284. [55]

<iA History of Printing in Colonial <3&ary land

and for their children the rights of Englishmen. In the sessions of 1724 and 1725, anxious to put themselves on record before their constituents in this matter, and at the same time to expose the obduracy of the Proprietary and the Upper House, the burgesses determined upon the printing of such of their recent proceedings as related to the contention which had been en- gaging their interest. The resulting collection was the earliest printed record of which copies have remained of the proceedings and procedure of the Maryland Assembly, but before passing to a consideration of this pamphlet, it is necessary to take account of an earlier publication of the same charac- ter which has never engaged the attention of bibliographers.

On October 13, 1724, the following entry was made on the journal of the Lower House :

"Several printed Copys of the Address and the Resolves of the Lower House in October Assembly 1722 being produced to this house are well approved of in the manner as they are now printed."1

No copy of this initial issue of the Maryland Assembly proceedings has ever been recorded. Its printing had not been ordered by the Assembly of 1722, in which year it might conceivably have been printed by Michael Piper. No mention was made of it in the Assembly of 1723, and from the expression used in 1724, "the manner as they are now printed," one ac- quires the impression that the publication had newly issued from the press. Bladen's old press, presumably, having been sent to Philadelphia, there was no printing press in Annapolis in 1724, so that in seeking the place of origin of the first printed proceedings of the Maryland Assembly, one turns naturally to the office of that busy Philadelphia printer, Andrew Bradford, whose relations with the Province had continued to be close. It is not listed, however, with the issues of his press, nor is it recorded elsewhere in Ameri- can bibliographies.

One passes with relief from this ghost book, the "Address and Resolves of the Lower House of Assembly of Maryland in the Session of October 1722," to the well known but rare work of a similar character which Bradford printed for Thomas Bordley, Esq., in the year 1725. In the October session of 1724, three days before the occurrence which has been spoken of in the foregoing sentences, the delegates in the resolution cited below had pro- vided for the publication of such of their proceedings as had to do with the English statutes in Maryland and related constitutional matters. "It be- ing proposed," the journal records,

"that for the more effectually publishing the Resolves and the Address relating to the

. J., October 13, 1724, Archives of Maryland, 35: 102.

[56]

Zengers ^Maryland Venture • The Earliest ^Assembly Proceedings

Constitution of Maryland, the same may be printed, Resolved that any person have the Jberty of printing them that will undertake the same."1

In spite of the invitation thus cordially extended, no one seems to have volunteered to assume the risk of the publication, so that as the session drew near to its close the delegates found themselves compelled to request Dne of their own number, Thomas Bordley, a leader in their struggle, to and to have printed a collection containing the Charter and "such of the Debates & proceedings of the three Sessions of this Assembly as relate to the Government or Judicature of this Province,"2 a request "which the said Thomas Bordley Esqr being present promised his Endeavour to per- form." A year later the journal records that Mr. Bordley brought into the House several printed copies of the "proceedings of the Lower House in the fears 1722/1723: 1724 relating to the Government and Judicature of this province . . . ," and in receiving them, it was entered on the book that

. . . this House . . . unanimously return their thanks to the said Thomas Bordley Esqr for his Extraordinary Care and pains in making a Collection of the said proceedings and Composing the preface thereto and getting them printed for the publick Service . . ."3

This collection of debates printed by Andrew Bradford of Philadelphia is a vital document in the constitutional history of the Province. Further- more the series of Votes and Proceedings , the publication of which began a year later to be regularly provided for by the Lower House, and which has continued without serious interruption until the present time, traces its origin to this compilation of legislative debates on the "Government and Judicature" of Maryland.

1 L. H. J., October 10, 1724, Archives of Maryland, 35: 99. The author has assumed, as the narrative indicates at this point, that this resolution of October 10, 1724, was carried into effect when the delegates requested Thomas Bordley to edit and have printed his well known compilation containing the Charter and such of the debates and proceedings of 1722-1724 as related to the government and judicature of the Province. With equal force, however, this resolution may be said to refer to the "printed Copys of the Address and the Resolves of the Lower House in October Assembly 1722" which were produced in the House on October 13, 1724, and "well approved of in the manner as they are now printed." Before accepting the second interpretation of the docu- ments, however, it is well to recall that as far as is known there was no printing press in Maryland in October 1724, and that it would have been almost impossible to have sent copy to Philadelphia and received in Annapolis a printed paper of several pages in the interval between October loth and October I3th. The alternative interpre- tation is that some person acting without authority had printed the "Address and Resolves," and that becoming aware of this the delegates had confirmed his action by an ex post facto resolution; that is the resolution of Octo- ber loth, thus making it possible for the publication to be presented for approval on October I3th.

2L. H. J., October 29, 1724, Archives of Maryland, 35: 149.

SL. H. J., October 7, 1725, Archives of Maryland, 35: 303. For a valuable discussion of the contention over the English Statutes, the reader is referred to Sioussat, St. G. L., The English Statutes in Maryland (Johns Hop- kins Studies in Historical and Political Science, Series XXI, Nos. n and 12, Baltimore, 1903). Mr. Sioussat's suggestion that probably the preface to the collection described above was the work of Daniel Dulany, the Elder, does not seem to be borne out by the extract from the House Journal in which its composition is specifically attributed to Bordley.

[571

*A History of Printing in

THE END OF THE FIRST PERIOD OF MARYLAND PRINTING HISTORY

The publication in 1725 of the "proceedings of the Lower House" under Bordley's editorship brings to a close the first period of Maryland printing history. Except for unrelated and unsustained researches by various per- sons, these four decades hitherto have been neglected by American typo- graphical annalists. Even in this day when the evidence of the provincial documents is accessible to every investigator, it is frequently affirmed that printing was not carried on in Maryland during the years in which William Nuthead, Thomas Reading and John Peter Zenger were active there in the prosecution of their trade. It is believed that the foregoing statement of the operations of these men removes the reality of their printing activity from the field of debate. In the next chapter, almost the central point of the narrative, will be assumed the pleasant task of recording the work of William Parks, a notable printer with whose coming to Annapolis in 1726, Isaiah Thomas commenced his sketch of Maryland printing.

[58]

CHAPTER SIX

William 'Parks ^Becomes ^Printer to His Lordship and the 'Province — The Collected Laws of IJ2J — The First <L%Cary land News- paper— The Early Tie lies Lettres of<^fCaryland

HE expression of gratitude by the Assembly for his edi- torial work, performed in 1725 in connection with the volume of "Debates and Proceedings," did not close the account between Thomas Bordley and the Province, for very soon after he had been publicly thanked for this ser- vice, he put the people of Maryland under an even greater obligation by his initiative and diligence in procuring for •them a permanent resident printer. One month after the incident which has been referred to, the delegates, begging concurrence in their expressed approval of his action,1 informed the Upper House that Mr. Bordley had sent for a printer on the encouragement given by the resolutions of 1722 and 1723. The Upper House sent down its note of agreement immediately, and one assumes that Bordley now gave the word to his printer to trans- port himself and his equipment to the Province. In the next session of the Assembly there appeared before the delegates Mr. William Parks, an Eng- lish printer whose intelligence and enterprise gave impetus to the literary progress which occurred in the colonies of Maryland and Virginia during the ensuing decade.

Isaiah Thomas is authority for the statement that William Parks was born in England and bred to the composing stick before leaving his native land.2 Where was his initial employment in America, whether he worked first in Pennsylvania or in one of the northern colonies, or whether he came directly to Maryland are questions concerning him which have not been answered. It is possible that he was a journeyman in the shop of Andrew Bradford, where Bordley may well have become acquainted with him dur- ing the printing in that establishment of the "Debates and Proceedings" of 1725, but in truth this conjecture is based upon no real evidence. Indeed,

1 U. H. J., November 6, 1725, Archives of Maryland, 35: 289.

* Thomas, 1st ed., 2: 143. See also note 2, on page 73 of this narrative.

C59]

*A History of Printing in (Colonial ^Maryland

there is, in general, a paucity of personal details in our knowledge of this outstanding figure in American typographical history. The surname of Ele- anor, his wife, is conjectural, and there is uncertainty also in regard to his descendants. He left at his death a daughter, Eleanor, who married John Shelton of Hanover County, Virginia, and became the mother of Sarah Shelton, who was presumably the first wife of Patrick Henry. At Parks's death his estate was found to be almost valueless. In the accounts filed in connection with its settlement mention was made of a sum paid Mr. Mac- nemara of Maryland for his services in connection with docking the entail of a tract in that Province known as "Park Hall,"1 and of a lot in the city of Annapolis. This bare outline and the circumstances of his death com- prise practically all that is known of importance in the personal life of Wil- liam Parks.2

MARYLAND PUBLIC PRINTING ASSUMES A NEW DIGNITY WITH THE COMING OF PARKS

Soon after the establishment of the Parks press in Annapolis, the office of public printer of Maryland assumed a dignity which formerly it had not possessed. Until this time the work and remuneration of the several resi- dent printers had been determined at successive meetings of the Assembly by ordinance and resolution, but in the session of October 1727, the status of Parks as provincial printer, his duties in and salary for the performance of that office were fixed by statutory enactment, as always thereafter were the status, duties and salary of his successors. Two years were to pass, how- ever, before the passage of this, the first law for printing in Maryland, but from the very beginning of his residence, the relations between printer and Assembly took on a more businesslike character than had pertained to them in earlier days. In the March Assembly of 1725/26, Parks made def- inite proposals as to the terms under which he would operate his press in the service of the Province. In briefer form than in the original, these "pro- posals3 humbly offer'd by William Parks" were as follows:

i. He would print the session laws of each Assembly for the sum of two thousand pounds of tobacco from each county, one copy to be delivered to

'his tract, in what was then Prince George's County, was surveyed for William Parks on April 9, 1731. It d 1,550 acres, .t » not to be confused with another "Park Hall" surveyed for James Carroll on Novem-

B M™ ( 'R u* m uat '! "°]T Carro11 County' the earliest surv£y ofland made in that countv- Mr- William

bv w2 R M" P . JX transmitted the ^egoing facts to the author. See also The Old Indian Road,

by Wil i. Marye, Part i, Maryland Historical Magazine, June 1920

uJTrZZl ,73, th'S "arfarve- See also references in Thomas, both editions; and in the William and '.. Yn ?r V ?: r • S and the inventory and accounts of nis estate are preserved in the Court

Yorktown, Va. Cop.es are m the Maryland Historical Society. H. J., March ai, 1725/26, Archives of Maryland, 35: 475-476.

[60]

William Parks, Public Printer oftJxCaryland and Virginia

each of the members of the Assembly, the Commissioners of the Peace and the justices of the County Court.

2. He would print journals, votes, speeches, etc., at a price per sheet later to be fixed.

3. If the first two proposals were accepted, and if he were given fair as- surance of a permanent establishment in Maryland, he would print a whole body of the laws hitherto made in the Province and ease the public of the charge of it and himself run the hazard of its publication by subscription.

Upon receipt of these proposals, the two Houses appointed a joint com- mittee to treat with Parks on their separate articles or on "whatever else should be thought necessary for his encouragement in the Service of the Country." There was dissension among the conferees as to the acceptance of the second article of the proposals, and reaching a deadlock in the discus- sion of its terms they agreed finally to refer it back to the consideration of both Houses. The first article of the proposals, with its very much greater rate of payment than previously had been considered necessary, they ap- proved with the qualification that the two thousand pounds of tobacco from each county were to be paid by the year and not by the session as the printer had proposed. In regard to the third article, they recommended that the body of laws should be published at the public charge, and that the printer should be paid for them at the rate of twenty-four shillings a copy, the distri- bution of the copies to be the same as that prescribed for the session laws.1 The conferees of the Lower House reported to the delegates that they had proposed in committee, under the second article, an allowance to the printer of twenty shillings a sheet for their journals and proceedings, and upon re- ceiving this report, the House approved it and

"Resolved that the said Parks be allowed after the Rate menconed ... for printing any the publick proceedings of the last Sessions, And that he be Appointed and have the Character of publick printer to the province."2

Although they concurred with the delegates on the first and third arti- cles of the proposals, the Upper House objected to the printing of the jour- nals and proceedings as "an unnecessary charge to the publick," and in regard to the title which the printer should bear, their Honors informed the dele- gates sharply that the Governor had already licensed Parks "to print the Laws as Printer to his Lordship," and that title, their message said, they conceived "to be a sufficient distinguishing Character."3

1U. H. J., March 23, 1725/26, Archives of Maryland, 35: 451 and 452.

2L. H. J., March 21, 1725/26, Archives of Maryland, 35: 476 and 477.

3 U. H. J., March 23, 1725/26, Archives of Maryland, 35: 455. In his first issue of the "Proceedings," later to be described, Parks "played safe" by adopting for himself two titles; in the imprint he described himself as "Printer to the Right Honourable the Lord Proprietor, and the Province."

[61]

*A History of Printing in Colonial *3£ary land

In objecting to the printing of the Lower House journals, the Upper House had in mind not so much economy, as was asserted in its message, as a dis- like of publicity in connection with the Assembly's action on the English statutes. Long customary in others of the colonies, however, the regular publication of Assembly proceedings could not be postponed much longer in Maryland. On receiving the adverse report from the Upper House, dis- approving their suggestion that the Lower House journals be printed each session, the delegates acted with the assertiveness customary to them in the face of opposition to their plans. The clerk recorded their defiance in these words :

"Notwithstanding which Message, It is Resolved that such of the debates and proceed- ings of the last Session of Assembly as relate to the Government or Judicature of this Prov- ince or other materiall publick Affairs thereof be printed at the Charge of the Publick And thereupon John Beale and Vachel Denton Esqrs. are appointed to Make a Collection of the Laws now in force to be reduced into one Volumn fit for the press with Marginall notes and also of the proceedings above menconed and that the printers observe their directions therein."1

It is clear from what follows that the new printer was in danger of being torn asunder by the jealousies and antagonisms of the parties. In the next session of the Assembly, he was brought to the bar of the Lower House to explain why he had failed to print the proceedings of the last two sessions in accordance with the terms of the Lower House resolution. In his defence, he answered that "his Honr the Governour ordered him not (to) print them until the Bodies of Laws were first finished."2 His Honor the Governor this year chanced to be Charles Calvert, a relative of the Proprietary, a person- age who would have been sure to support with all his power of negative action the policy of a family which was beginning to regard the people of Maryland as a perverse and ungrateful race. In this instance, one observes with satisfaction that the determination of the delegates to print their con- stitutional proceedings was equal to the ingenuity of the Governor in post- poning tne publication of them, for in the year 1727, after the body of laws had been published and Charles Calvert had been superseded in his gov- ernorship by Benedict Leonard Calvert, Parks issued the proceedings3 of the three sessions of October and March 1725 and July 1726, collected and edited by Messrs. Beale and Denton, as had been provided for in the origi- nal resolution of March i725/26.Thevictory was with the delegates; never afterwards did the Upper House gainsay their "liberty to print."

[62]

. J., March 23, 1725/26, Archives of Maryland, 35: 484 and 485. t L. H. J., July 14, 1726, Archives of Maryland, 35: 536. Copy in the Maryland Historical Society probably unique. See bibliographical appendi

William Parks, Public Printer of ^Maryland and Virginia

THE COMPILED LAWS OF 1727

In spite of the lack of harmony between the Houses in regard to his work, Parks went quietly forward with the execution of the tasks allotted to him by their resolutions. The laws of the March Assembly of 1725/26 made their appearance in course,1 and on their last page was an advertisement in which was announced as forthcoming from Parks's press an edition of the whole Body of Laws from the beginning of the Province down to the year 1726, of which the price to subscribers was to be twenty shillings a copy. The edition of the collected laws which he proceeded to publish, probably in the autumn of 1727, was that which was known in Bacon's day as the "old Body of Laws," and which until the appearance of Bacon's great work in 1 765, remained as the most ambitious production of the Mary land press.2 In comparing it with his own larger and more scholarly edition of the laws, Bacon was not especially complimentary to the earlier collection. "The Su- periority of the present Edition," he wrote in his Preface,

"will best appear from a Comparison of it with the last mentioned; which, tho' Pub- lished (as set forth in the Title Page) by Authority, is in Fact very imperfect, and replete with Errors: The Printer having used no other Copy of the Laws, made before the Year 1719, than that of Bradford's Edition, which was published without any Authority; and consequently hath adopted, as may appear in several Instances, the Blunders of that Edi- tion: Which, together with its own Mistakes, make up a considerable Number."

It may have been that the considerable number of mistakes which he found in "the old Body of Laws" taught Bacon the desirability of making transcripts for his collection from the original acts, so that through the blunders of Parks and Evan Jones he attained a height of editorial grace not reached, or even striven for perhaps, by his predecessors.

THE BEGINNINGS OF A LITERARY TRADITION IN MARYLAND William Parks became almost immediately an important member of the provincial society. To give opportunity for discussion of public affairs, to attempt to form public opinion, are not functions belonging only to the modern newspaper and publishing house. In the Maryland Gazette, which he began in 1727, Parks plunged to the heart of the economic problems fac- ing the Province, and among the early issues of his press was a pamphlet in which the absorbing question of American politics, the question of the

1 Copy of this edition of the session laws in the Maryland Diocesan Library, Baltimore, is the only one known.

2 In his Maryland Gazette for December, 17, 1728, Parks advertises that he has left a few copies of the Body of Laws at the regular price of a pistole each. He vents his vexation against those pluralists in office who have hurt his sales of the book by selling their own duplicates. In the course of the notice, he says that the work was ad- vertised for publication more than a year ago, which means that it had been published probably in the autumn of 1727.

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William Parks, Public Printer of^Caryland and Virginia

extension of the English statutes, was treated in a notable plea by Daniel Dulany the Elder.1 Although he was able to keep on good terms with its representatives, Parks was not subservient to the government of the Pro- prietary. He considered himself to be the servant of the Lower House of Assembly in its constitutional struggles, and all that he did was done boldly and apparently without regard for the Proprietary influence. The author of the Sotweed Redivivus, published in Annapolis in 1730, commented on the activity and zeal of the Parks establishment in the lines, ". . . the Press with Schemes does swell, To make us Thrive at home the better,"

and for once the rough-tongued satirist was guiltless of exaggeration. The bibliography attached to this narrative, containing, it is believed, by no means all of the publications issued by Parks during his twelve years of resi- dence in Maryland, indicates none the less the scope of his service to the Province. His newspaper, his almanacs, his issues of works of politics, eco- nomics and religion, of satiric verse and vers de societe bespeak him a man of public spirit, and a printer in whom literary appreciation was joined to business enterprise.

The beginnings of the Maryland literary tradition, fostered by the press of the new printer, rest upon the work of Richard Lewis and Ebenezer Cooke, two writers whose names are almost unknown in other connections. On March 1 8th of the year 1728/29, Governor Benedict Leonard Calvert wrote in these words to his friend Thomas Hearne, the antiquary, who was some- what disgruntled, it may be observed incidentally, at having to pay 35. 6d. postage on the letter and the parcel which accompanied it:

"Wee have had here of late a Printing house set up, which I have encouraged with as much Countenance from the Government as possible. Wee have printed our Body of Laws, and I herewith send you one of our first issue of the press, a translation of the Muscipula by one Lewis, a schoolmaster here who formerly belonged to Eaton, a man realy of Inge- nuity, and to My Judgment well versed in poetry."2

The work here referred to was a satire on the Welsh people, written in Latin in the mock-heroic style by Edward Holdsworth. Its translation by Richard Lewis,3 probably a successor of Michael Piper in King William's

1 The Right of the Inhabitants of Maryland to the Benefit of the English Laws. Annapolis, 1728. See bibliographi- cal appendix.

2 See appendix for title and description. This reference to it is found in Hearne's Collections, 10: 109, from which it is quoted in the Maryland Historical Magazine, 1 1 : 282.

3 Richard Lewis, who according to Gov. Calvert, was an old Etonian, was in Maryland as early as Octol 1725. He remained there certainly until October 27, 1732, at which time he wrote a letter to England describing various natural wonders of Maryland. (See Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 37: 69 and 38: 119). He was a frequent contributor to the Maryland Gazette, from the columns of which several of his pieces were reprinted. See Maryland Historical Society Fund Pub. No. 36 and Maryland Historical Magazine, *>: 71.

[65]

THE

MARTLAND MUSE.

CONTAINING

L The Hiftory of Colonel NATIANXII. BACOW'I Rebellion in r/RG/NI4. Done into Htdibrafliclt Veifc, from an old MS.

II. The So T WEB D FACTO*, atVoh&toMARrLAXD. The Third EDITION, Correfied and Amtnded.

By E COOK i, Gent £^ Cr i/tfif tbat/hall dtfcommend it,

Printed in the Year MJDCQXXXL

PLATE V. Seepage xiii.

William Parks, Public Printer of^hCaryland and Virginia

School, Annapolis, was the first distinctly literary production of the Mary- land press, and although it has this interest of priority in Maryland literary bibliography, yet its subject matter is of small concern to modern readers. It must have been indeed, even at the time of its translation, that its mag- niloquence was related only distantly to the interests of the Maryland peo- ple.x After its publication Lewis remained in Maryland for some years, during which he continued, through the medium of the Parks press, to display his respectable talent for poetical expression. One of his most praiseworthy effusions was an ode, entitled "Carmen Seculare," in which, in well-turned lines, packed with a description of Maryland and an abstract of its history,2 he welcomed Charles Lord Baltimore on the occasion of that dignitary's visit to the Province in the year 1732. A very minor poet indeed, Richard Lewis is yet not a figure to be despised as the founder of a literary tradition.

Of greater importance perhaps than the work of the elegant and conven- tional Lewis was the satirical verse of Ebenezer Cooke, Gent., who pub- lished in London in the year 1708 a poem entitled The Sot-Weed Factory or

a Voyage to Maryland. A Satyr In Burlesque Verse* No details remain

by which may be identified this cruel satirist, who came out to Maryland, he tells us, as a tobacco, or "Sot-Weed" factor, and who, as distaste for the crude life of the country mingled with his grievances against its inhabi- tants, wrote in atrabiliar fluid a poem in which the wit was almost obscured by the bitterness and scurrility which appeared in every line. The picture of men and manners which he presented in The Sot-Weed Factor was colored by his mood, but so patently correct are its background and drawing that the student of Maryland social history must always turn to the contem- plation of it as an important element in his studies.

With the passing of the years, Cooke's spleen subsided. In the year 1730, there was written by "E. C. Gent.," and printed by William Parks, a satire, The Sotweed Redivivus, in which there was less wit than was apparent in the earlier work, and less scurrility, and in which bitterness was sup- planted by a spirit of constructive criticism of local politics and trade. That at this time, however, Cooke was not in any sense repentant of his earlier

/• 1 r l_

and more vindictive criticism of the Province, appears from the fact that in 1731 he republished The Sot-Weed Factors a volume entitled The Mary-

1 In referring to it in his Diary, Hearne noted under date of August 7, 1732, "Twas printed at Annapolis that year and is one of the first things ever printed in that Country." In The Remains of Thomas Hearne, Bl London, 1869, 3: 90.

2 A large portion of this ode was reprinted in American Museum for 1789, 6: 413.. under title of "A Descrip- tion of Maryland." For an account of the original edition, see bibliographical appendix of the present work.

3 See Maryland Historical Society Fund Pub. No. 36, Early Maryland Poetry , edited by Bernard C. Steiner.

[67]

of Printing in Colonial tJtfary land

land Muse? which Parks printed in his Annapolis establishment. In a note at the conclusion of this volume, described on its title-page as the third edition, the author thanked his friends and benefactors for the encourage- ment which they had given him and promised the publication of an annual collection under the same title. No traces remain, however, either of a second volume of the series, or of the two earlier editions of the first vol- ume. A part of its contents was a poem entitled and described as "The History of Colonel Nathaniel Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, Done into Hu- dibrastick Verse from an old Ms." One is fain to accept the pedigree for this poem which is provided in the pleasant, punning address indited by an unknown "H. J." to its author, E. Cooke, Gent. There are few who will not be amused by the lines which follow:

To THE AUTHOR.* Old Poet,

As you may remember, You told me sometime in September, Your pleasant Muse was idly sitting, Longing for some new Subject fitting For this Meridian, and her Inditing, Worth Praise and Pence, for Pains in Writing. I therefore (thinking it great Pity A Muse should pine, that is so witty) Have sent an old, authentick Book, For Her in Doggrel Verse to Cook; For since it never was in Print, (Tho' wondrous Truths are written in't) It may be worthy Clio's Rhimes, To hand it down to future Times. You know what never-fading Glory, Old Salust got by Catlin's Story; The Fame Hyde gain'd, I need not tell y'on, By's Hist'ry of the Grand Rebellion: You know how Butler's witty Lays Procur'd for him immortal Praise: I'll add no more — But if you please, Sir, Attempt the same for Ebenezer, Which you may gain, or I'm mistaken If you can nicely Cook this Bacon.

H.J.

NY 18810 0/7- cippuimmenr is not Known. ly\er,M.(^.,Htstory <J American Literature.

have been th^ Fk5' dlscu!fs1Cooke and his satires. Nothing is known of Cooke besides his writings. He may have bee that Ebenezer Cooke who was resident in St. Mary's City in 1693.

Muse. C * Wefe C0p'ed f°r this work from the uni(lue British Museum copy of The Maryland

[68]

William Parks, Public Printer of ^Maryland and Virginia

One would like to know more of this "Old Poet" and his friends. Indeed the little group of essayists, versifiers and political writers who gathered around William Parks, the Annapolis publisher, has an interest for the stu- dent of American literary beginnings which on the personal side, at least, has never been satisfied.

The

MarylandG azette

From Tuefd&7 December 24, to Tuefday December 31,1728.

(Numb. LXVill

He tlti irunt 1rtti ; fiuifymt i<Hf»*ttt more*. Panrrt Suijetl,,, cj> itktlUrtfaftrbtt,

Virj.

SIR,

S the Powers of Euroft are folemnly »(• femhled 10 fettle the Peace, anJ adjuft the Rights of all the contending Prince*, it m iy not be thought unfeafonahle to of- fer fome moJeS ConjeSurei on ihit Af- fair :' Poflibie it may influence a better Enquiry ; and the lead Attention in this

^SPS^^ Cafe »ill afford uv a I'rofpea fufficienily delig'uful, and far, very far from Precarious.

Fret to hi< Pom in the Mriatitti Sri, anJ other PrnceC(fin>; «f the like KioJ. Slnll we then, after all this he faugh to fear the Cfftft will hurt us in thi< Point, .inj eftablifl a Commerce t!iu> abindon'd by it- beft and moft (anguint Friend* ?

If Gikr.iit/tr be onr of this Qucffjnn ( and ir wotiM be mnfl CTtn».->£.int to think it a Point in T^brte ) c.'ie Lolfdi of mi? Merchants and the 5- X Company, will be the only Affjir- to determine- Att'iin that are noroffuch Importance a« to embroil us or keep ut long in Sufpence . 'tit joft that »f fhoold fir II refer thefc to an amicable Mediation, and it that fnouM ful ut, we may then recur to Artm • But the Crown of Sri,un it not in any Condition to withftand ut when we come to Blows and will hardly crer hiznrd did a. d.ingcrou$ Iliuc : ic will coft them fn much Blood and

PLATE Va. Seepage xiii.

PARKS'S Maryland Gazette, THE FIRST NEWSPAPER SOUTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

Principally, however, was the Province indebted to Parks for his estab- lishment of its first newspaper. In the month of September 1727, appeared the inaugural issue of the Mary land Gazette y the first newspaper to be pub- lished south of Pennsylvania, and the seventh to attain regular publication in English America. It was issued continuously until March 1730/31, when it seems to have been discontinued to resume publication again nearly two years later, in December 1732. At this time its proprietor formed a part-

[69]

iA History of Printing in

nership with Edmund Hall1 which enabled him to extend his interests in Maryland without neglecting those newly established elsewhere. After- wards, when in the summer or autumn of 1733 the partnership was dis- solved, Parks alone carried on the paper until what was probably its last issue on November 29, 1734-2

The first Maryland newspaper was by no means a contemptible journal. While in England in 1730, Parks arranged for regular foreign correspon- dence for its columns,3 and close at hand in Maryland he had some of the leading men in the colony, in whose contributions, usually in the form of letters, were discussed the local and colonial politics and questions of eco- nomics and trade. Furthermore, for his department of belles lettres he had always nearby Ebenezer Cooke, Richard Lewis and other regular contribu- tors, whose weekly poems and essays gave an undeniable tone to the pub- lication, howbeit that tone was frequently stilted and self-conscious, in the manner of an age when, abhorring to write naturally, men gave themselves up to an obsession for elegance and urbanity. It is unnecessary to remark on the value to the historian of the remaining copies of Parks' s Maryland Gazette, for in that mirror is reflected the life of the Province during a period of years which were representative of the first half of the century. One re- s' sts with difficulty the temptation to philosophize the matter of its yel- lowed pages.

OTHER ACTIVITIES OF PARKS IN MARYLAND, AND HIS DEPARTURE FOR VIRGINIA

To the activities of Parks as publisher and printer were added, as was customary in America at this period, those of bookseller and bookbinder.

1 Little is known of this Edmund Hall who appeared in the imprint of the Maryland Gazette and elsewhere in 1732 and 1733 as the partner of William Parks. On July 13, 1732 (L. H. J.), "Mr. Edmund Hall a printer in Partnership with Mr. Parks is Allowed to print the Votes of this Session for the Usual Allowance," and again on March 14, 1732/33, a similar permission was granted Mr. Hall, "Conditionally that he print them Daily." The partnership must have been dissolved soon after this, for Hall's name disappeared from the imprints of the Parks establishment and, as before, Parks printed alone. He may have been retained as manager of the Annap- olis establishment, however, for on April 27, 1737 (L. H. J.), Mr. Hall again was authorized to print the Lower House proceedings. Nothing is heard of him after this, and his name only was known to Isaiah Thomas. Even less than this, however, is known of Mr. Webb, who in 1736, "agreed to print the Votes of the Lower House of Assembly this Session at the usual Allowance." This may have been Parks's foreman or the manager of the An- napolis branch of the establishment. When Parks went to Virginia to petition the Assembly in 1727, George Webb, Gent., was appointed to prepare the laws of that colony for the press. He was employed by the Virginia Assembly for similar tasks for several years afterwards. It is possible that he and Parks formed a connection. here was also a George Webb, journeyman printer, in Philadelphia in 1728, but he is supposed to have returned efore the date named above. John Webb, bookseller and publisher of Philadelphia a decade later, only other person of the name who seems in any way to have been connected with printing or the allied trades in this time and place.

* Evans, No. 2899; Brighatn, C. S., Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1600-1820. (Part III.) In Proceedings

American Antiquarian Society, April 1915. Advertisement, Maryland Gazette, June 9, 1730. Evans, No. 2899.

[70]

William Parks, Public Printer of<3*Caryland and Virginia

He advertised himself as one "Who binds old Books very well, and cheap," and in the same advertisement announced that he had for sale "A parcel of very curious Metzotinto Prints" at reasonable rates^He imported books from London to sell to his Maryland customers, and in the case of certain religious works such as primers and catechisms, he seems to have imported the sheets, later to be folded and sewed in his own establishment. It is prob- able that as bookseller, he had for sale a variety of other articles, for the booksellers of the time traded busily in small stores of the unclassified sort; Bradford2 of Philadelphia had in his stock such dissimilar articles as whale- bone, live goose feathers, pickled sturgeon, chocolate and Spanish snuflF, while a few years later, Hugh Gaine3 of New York dealt in everything from medicines to flutes and fiddle strings.

Until the year 1737, when he was brought to book by the House, the re- lations of Parks with the Assembly were such as to indicate that his merits were appreciated by that body,4 while on his part there seems to have been no dissatisfaction with his treatment by its members. Almost from his first coming to Maryland, however, Parks had recognized the possibilities of greatly increasing his business by uniting with it the printing of the colony of Virginia. He made tentative proposals to the Virginia Assembly for its printing work in the year 1727, and so well were his proposals received that three years later he set up in Williamsburg a branch office of his Maryland establishment. Eventually, the new office overshadowed the old in impor- tance, so that Parks began to neglect his Maryland business in favor of that of the colony to which later he was to transfer all of his interests. In an act of the Maryland Assembly of April 1737, wherein he was still de- scribed as "of the City of Annapolis," it was set forth against him that he had neglected to print the laws of the previous session, and that because of this neglect the Province had been put to the expense of having the laws of that session transcribed. As a consequence of this defection by the printer, it was enacted that thereafter the counties should not pay him unless he should have delivered the printed laws within four months after the con- clusion of each session. This was the last incident in connection with the

1 Maryland Gazette, July 15, 1729.

2 Thomas, ist ed., 2: 31.

3 Ford, P. L. ed., Journals of Hugh Gaine, Printer. 2 v. 1902, 1 : 27 and 28.

4 In the first appendix to this narrative is to be found a copy of the Act of 1727 for the encouragement of Wil- liam Parks, the first enactment on the Maryland statute book in which provision is made for printing. Following it is an abstract of later printing legislation in the Province. Isaiah Thomas, ist ed., 2: 128, asserts that Parks was paid two hundred pounds a year by the Maryland Assembly. With tobacco at ten shillings a hundred in 1730 (Archives of Maryland, 37: 136) it is probable that Parks's allowance of twenty-four thousand pounds ot tobacco from the counties for printing the laws, and his extra allowance from the Lower House for pnr votes and proceedings amounted to about the sum specified by Mr. Thomas.

*A History of Printing in Colonial zJtfary land

work of William Parks in Maryland, and very soon after the passage of the act of admonition, having in the meantime, however, rectified his negli- gence by printing the acts of April I736,1 he removed his entire establish- ment to Virginia, leaving the Province of Maryland without a printer. In November 1737, at the close of a letter to a correspondent in Philadelphia, Governor Ogle wrote "as we have not a Press here at present, I have given Directions to the Bearer of this to get a good Number of Proclamations printed in Philadelphia."2

PARKS ESTABLISHES PRINTING ON A FIRM BASIS IN VIRGINIA

Closely identified as Parks is with the Province of Maryland, his name is even more intimately associated with the literary history of Virginia than with that of the sister colony. Virginia had been without a printer since the failure of Nuthead's venture at Jamestown in the year 1683," and when in February 1727, Parks presented to the Virginia Houseof Burgesses his pro- posals for printing a collection of its laws, and its session laws of succeeding years, his tentatives met with immediate and intelligent approval by that body. A committee composed of some of the leading men of the colony was appointed to arrange the details of the publication with the printer, and when the work finally appeared in the year 1733, Parks had been for three years an important personage in the Virginia capital, between which and Annapolis he was then dividing his time and energies. In the year 1732 he was allowed by the Virginia burgesses an annual salary of one hundred and twenty pounds, a rate of payment at which he continued to serve the col- ony until the year 173 8, when, as the result of a petition which he presented to the Assembly, his emolument was increased to two hundred pounds. In 1742 he was allowed two hundred and thirty pounds, and again in 1744 his increasing importance in the colony was recognized by the addition of fifty pounds annually to this sum, so that in his last six years of life, his salary for public work was two hundred and eighty pounds a year. In his petition for a larger salary, addressed to the Virginia Assembly on December 5, 1738, he asserted that he had relieved the colony of the "Drawback of the Duty upon Paper." It is possible that he referred in this statement to the paper mill which he is known to have established at Williamsburg, the first paper mill, it should be said, to be built in English America south of Penn-

*See the bibliographical appendix under the year 1736, where this set of session laws is recorded with date of March 19, 1735.

2 Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania. Harrisburg, 1851, 4: 253.

'Evans, No. 1057, records a pamphlet printed by Fr. Maggot of Williamsburg in 1702, but as nothing can be discovered concerning such a person or press, he concludes the name to be an ironym.

[72]

William Parks, Public Printer of^fCaryland and Virginia

sylvania. It is generally believed, however, that Parks's paper mill was not established until the year I744.1

Although late in the field, the Virginia press soon obtained a position of importance among the typographical establishments of the colonies. Parks was a neat printer and an intelligent man of affairs. In Maryland he had been the first to establish a newspaper, and to print works of a literary nature; in Virginia also, he was the pioneer journalist, and to his publica- tion of works of belles tettres, he added those of history and general litera- ture. Copies of his Williamsburg edition of Stith's History of Virginia^ published in 1747, are among the much sought after items of Americana; Typographiay an ode on printing by J. Markland, which he published in 1730, would bring a great price as the first American contribution to its subject if the single known copy of it should ever emerge into the auction room from the shelves of the John Carter Brown Library. For his more important works he chose an excellent quality of paper, and in general his typographical execution was neat and dignified. His session laws of both colonies present a good appearance, and his edition of the Laws of Virginia, printed in the year 1733, contends f°r &rst place in typographical excellence with two or three other well known works of the first half of the century.

Until his death in the year 1750, Parks continued to fill an important place in the public life of Virginia. In the course of a voyage to England undertaken in this year, he came down with a pleurisy and died after a short illness. His body was carried to England and there buried. That his labors after all had been unrewarded may be inferred from the fact that at his death his assets were found to be slightly more than six thousand pounds, while his liabilities were only a few pounds less than this amount.2 There was no printer of his day, however, Franklin alone excepted, whose service to typography and letters in America presents a greater claim on the inter- est and gratitude of posterity.

1 See Weeks, L. H., History of Paper Manufacturing in the U. S., 1690-1916, N. Y. 1916, for an account of the first Virginia paper mill, particularly the verses from the Virginia Gazette quoted there, in which praise of the enterprise of Parks is united to a plea for rags to be used in the mill. Many will be amused at this jocular admonition to men and maidens to contribute their worn linen to Mr. Parks's mill. This mill probably continued in operation until Parks's death, for it was sold by his executors for £96, 35. 9d.