SCARCE AND DESIRABLE 1726 PRINTING OF THE ACTS AND LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS, ONE OF THE EARLIEST AMERICAN COLONIES

(MASSACHUSETTS ACTS AND LAWS). The Charter Granted by Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary to the Inhabitants of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England. WITH: Acts and Laws of His Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England. Boston: B. Green, 1726-27. Folio, period-style full paneled brown calf, raised bands, black morocco spine label; pp. [2], 14, [2], 354, 17. $4000.

First edition, scarce colonial printing, of the charter and laws of Massachusetts, one of the earliest and subsequently one of the most rebellious of British colonies, with separate title pages and royal arms on second title.

“Considerable mystery surrounds the grant of the charter to the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629. The enemies of the colony later insisted that it was gotten surreptitiously, and there are some grounds for suspecting that bribery was involved. In any event… its charter was that of a trading company much like that given to the Virginia Company in 1612… Despite legislation and the multiplication of administrative agencies and offices, the colonies were never brought under effective control for any length of time. After 1660, Massachusetts provided a center of resistance… Other colonies likewise opposed efforts at control, but none in this period were so strenuous as Massachusetts… [and] the Massachusetts Bay charter of 1629 was vacated in 1684. The Dominion of New England wiped out the legislatures of the New England colonies and substituted for them a royal governor and council who were given the power to rule without consulting the inhabitants… When Massachusetts got a new charter in 1691, the colony’s independence was limited by the addition of a royal governor and royal officials… While, in the strictest sense, no government could exist in the colonies without a grant from the Crown, there did exist in the colonies from the start a concept and a practice which assumed that there was a more basic foundation of society and government than that offered by grants from higher authority… As the colonies grew, there was ever more evidence of growing self-consciousness and of an insistence that the colonies had ‘rights’ … Implicit in these is the assumption that the ‘rights’ of Englishmen are inherent rights, not a gift from higher authority” (Jensen, 61-64, 234,184).

This early and scarce imprint providing fascinating insights into colonial attitudes and concerns, including relations with Indians and acts concerning prisons, trials, tradesmen, taverns, and the killing of wolves. Copies of the Acts vary in collation, since after each legislative session, additional laws were issued and paged continuously. A complete copy can contain anywhere from 347 to more than 550 pages. This copy ends with additional pages 349-354 (Boston: B. Green, 1727). The Charter usually appears at the beginning of the 1726 printing, as in this copy. The Table, however, covers only the first 347 pages; this copy includes additional index entries in contemporary hand. Tower 215. Sabin 45568; 45673. Evans 2762; 2900. Title page with the contemporary owner signature of George Leonard, presumably Colonel George Leonard, a judge and member of the Massachusetts provincial council.

Occasional foxing and dampstaining, handsomely bound.