INTRODUCTION li

to the trial court for subsequent use. If there was any objection to the survey
returned, as there was in some instances, a new one might be ordered, until the
court had before it the outlining of contentions needed for the case. The prac-
tice in the early stages of its development is illustrated in the cases reported in
i Harris & McHenry, pages 8 to 16. After 1695 the services of the jury of twelve
were dispensed with; three instead of twelve men of the neighborhood were
sometimes used, and finally only the sheriff and the surveyor were regularly
ordered to make and return the resurveys. In the present record illustrations of
both earlier and later practices are met with. In the case of Grundy v. Rhoads'
Lessee (1694), two resurveys were made with the aid of juries of twelve men
each. On the other hand, in Alderne v. Seserson (1697), the provincial court
directed the warrant to Major Thomas Smithson, Capt. James Murphy, and Mr.
John Salter, requiring them " to see the Land in the Declaration mentioned
Surveyed and to direct the Surveyor in the resurveying of the Same according to
the Ancient Meets and Bounds in the Patient or Deed thereof Expressed: And
they Did Proceed upon the Said Survey, and they together with the Surveyor
made returns thereof to the Court ...... they being in the Nature or in the Place
of an Inquest or Office to have the View of the Land; " and in the cases of
Merehin's Lessee v. Heath and Cooper v. Bayley, in the years 1701 and 1708
respectively, the resurveys were directed to be made by the royal surveyors alone,
or by some other agreed upon by the parties. The practice in its main features
exists in Maryland today.

It has been the effort of the editors to reproduce the text without change
or correction; capitalization, spelling, and punctuation have been followed
strictly, even names obviously misspelled, as Junifer for Jenifer, Cumberlake
for Camberlake, and the like, being left as written. But it has been deemed
right that symbolic abbreviations and other shorthand expressions should
be spelled out as they would have been in a contemporary printing. Thus,
the words y^e and y*, in which the y, a survival of the Anglo-Saxon runic

letter, represented the sound of th, are spelled the and that, m is printed mm,

and con as tion. A peculiar flourish used in the manuscript for per, pre, or
pro, gives place to those letters, and the symbols b and be, are reproduced
as and, etc.

Several skilled hands have been called to the aid of the editors, and
acknowledgments are made to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas W. Hotchkiss, of Peeks-
kill, New York, for transcribing the text, to Miss E. Marie Becker, Librarian
of the Monmouth County Historical Society, Freehold, New Jersey, for col-
lating it, and to Messrs. Philip and J. Foner, of New York City, for assistance
in proof-reading.

CARROLL T. BOND