Zenger's Maryland Venture The Earliest Assembly Proceedings

print Ephraim Hermann's Copies of some Records & Depositions Relating to
Great Bohemia Manner 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 Maryland. Whether
Reading was 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 peculiar interest 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.

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