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^r, 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 1704 there was published in London An Abridgement of the Law s
in Force and Use in Her Majesty's Plantations,⁴ 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 1721,⁵ for in calling atten-
tion to the connection here noticed between the "Abridgement" of 1704 and

¹A 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 of 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.

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