Records of the Court of Assistants

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. This volume is intended to complete the publication of the Records of the Courts held by the Governor and Assistants for the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay from 1630 to 1692. In the preface of Volume II. Of these Records, known as the Records of the Court of Assistants, Mr. John Noble, Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court, stated that, although he intended originally to include what is now published in this volume as Part Three of Volume ii.,-he found that it contained such an amount of matter as to make a third volume necessary and it is accordingly now being issued as Volume III. When Mr. Noble resigned from office on June 15, 1908, because of ill-health, most of the work of collecting and pre paring the material for this volume had been done by him, with the assistance of Mr. William P. Upham, both now deceased. N o funds, however, were available for completing and publishing it. Since then numerous requests were made for the necessary appropriation, but without success. Finally, in the year 1925, largely through the efforts of the late Ex - Mayor Nathan Matthews, who for a long time had manifested great interest in the project, the attention of Hon. James M. Curley, Mayor of the City of Boston, was obtained and, at last, after many years of delay, through his good offices, the City Council of the City of Boston, acting as County Commissioners for the County of Suffolk, appropriated the funds needed to meet the expenses of completing and publishing these records in book form. I should not conclude without acknowledging with appreciation the able and devoted services of Miss Josie Murphy, a clerical assistant in this office, who assumed and carried on the compilation and correction of the material in this book, from Mr. Noble's resignation until her death in 1918; the services of Miss Madeleine Connors, who succeeded Miss Murphy and who has read the manuscript with its proof, and finally prepared it for the printer; and the con stant and generous assistance, adv