British Royal Proclamations Relating to America, 1603-1783

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Obvious typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. More detail can be found at the end of the book.
Burt Franklin: Bibliography and Reference Series # 56
Proclamation of 1688 (reduced facsimile).
BRITISH ROYAL PROCLAMATIONS RELATING TO AMERICA 1603-1783
EDITED BY CLARENCE S. BRIGHAM, A.M. Burt Franklin: Bibliography and Reference Series # 56
BURT FRANKLIN NEW YORK
Published by BURT FRANKLIN 514 West 113th Street New York 25, N. Y.
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY—1911
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

This volume is the outgrowth of action taken by the Society at its annual meeting in October, 1906, when a committee consisting of Mr. Waldo Lincoln, Professor William MacDonald, and Dr. J. Franklin Jameson was appointed to arrange for a new volume of the Society's Transactions. At the April meeting, 1907, the committee was given power to proceed with the publication of the British Royal Proclamations relating to America, and in October following appointed the writer to edit the volume. The editor spent the summer of 1908 in England engaged in this undertaking.
The present volume includes all English Royal proclamations which concern North and South America, from 1603 to 1783. Only those proclamations are printed which emanated directly from the King. The numerous declarations and proclamations issued by provincial and colonial governors, the unauthorized proclamations of minor English officials serving in America, the proclamations of the governors-general of Canada and the Thanksgiving and Fast-Day proclamations of the New England governors have all been omitted. They are documents of another class, and exist in such profusion as to be quite beyond the scope of this volume. These colonial proclamations, furthermore, are practically never entered in the English records. As original broadsides, they are very rarely found in English depositories, but are scattered throughout the libraries and archives of America. Enough of these exist to form the basis of another volume. Limiting the present field to royal proclamations allows the subject to be covered with reasonable completeness.