The Charter Granted by Their Majesties King William and Queen Mary, to the Inhabitants of the Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England. [Bound with:] Acts and Laws, of His Majesty's Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England.; Bound with the Acts and Laws 1726 through 1731

Boston: Printed by B. Green for Benjamin Eliot, 1731. Folio, pp. (2)2-14. 1-17(1) [Table]; (2)-347(1);349-456. Royal Arms woodcut on title-page, repeated as sectional headpieces. Bound in contemporary paneled calf (finely rebacked in style, corner tips and top of title-page repaired). Some browning and fraying of preliminary leaves, and along the edges, pen trials throughout). Provenance: dated inscription of Oakes Angier (176(0), partially torn into; presented to David Kingman, 1778; then presented to Simon Greenleaf from Ezra Kingman in 1812; Amherst College, manuscript inscription, withdrawn. Copies in the trade are rare, none have appeared in ABPC for the last 25 years. Evans 2762; 2900, 2901, 2902, 3054, 3055, 3056, 3057, 3182, 3306, 3307, 3440. The Massachusetts General Laws and Liberties were first promulgated in 1648 and the earliest surviving published collection of them was printed in 1660. The have been regarded as the first modern legal code of the western world. The laws retained some elements of the English common and statute law, but introduced considerable reforms in systems of land tenure and established new freedoms of speech and opinion in both the judiciary and local government. They granted equal protection to all under the law, defined rights of bail and appeal and moved toward stripping the Church of temporal authority. They, "pointed the way to democratic social and political institutions that were gradually incorporated into the legal structures of other colonies and other nations." (OCAH, pp. 514-5). The make up of these composite sets of laws vary considerably-further sessions were continuously paginated and added as they came off the press. The initial 1692-1726 collection, bound here, corresponds exactly to the collation give in Ford & Matthews, Bibliography of the Laws of Massachusetts Bay (1910) p. 357. The additional 11 sessions, each have a caption title and the majority with dated colophons.
The provenance of this volume is quite interesting. It contains the ownership signature of respected East Bridgewater (MA) lawyer, Oakes Angier (1745-1812)who trained with future President John Adams for a time. The book was then given by Angier to a Bridgewater neighbor and son of Captain David Kingman, a colonial representative, David Kingman (1763-1812). Upon his death, the volume was passed along by his brother to his son-in-law, Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853). Lawyer and author, Greenleaf became one of Portland, Maine's most skilled lawyers and was reporter of the Maine supreme court. He was appointed Royall Professor of Law at Harvard, and, along with Judge Joseph Story was the architect of Harvard Law School's rise to eminence. In 1846, he succeeded Story as Dane Professor of law at Harvard. His Treatise on the Law of Evidence (1842-53) became the foremost American authority.