This volume was prepared and edited by authority of the State of New Jersey, at the request of the New Jersey Historical Society, and under the direction of the following Committee of the Society: NATHANIEL NILES, Ch'n, WILLIAM NELSON, FREDERICK W. RICORD, GARRET D. W. VROOM, WILLIAM S. STRYKER. PREFACE. This volume contains the Journal of the Governor and Council of East Jersey from December 1st, 1682, to April 29th, 1703, both dates inclusive, and covering the whole period of the Proprietary Government by a Governor and Council. The original manuscript volume containing this Journal is a stout folio, well bound in old sheep, and is in perfect preservation, except that a part of one leaf has been cut out, as noted on page 16 of this book. The very existence of the Journal had been forgotten, as it was not in the State Library, nor elsewhere in the State House. One day in the year 1870 or 1871, a former manservant of a deceased New Jersey statesman came into the office of Mr. Garret D. W. Vroom, in Trenton, with a great bag of books, which he said he had gathered together in "clearing up" the house and office of his late employer. Mr. Vroom asked him to empty his bag and show what he had, which he promptly did. The first volume to tumble out upon the floor was this Journal, from 1682 to 1703—a book of priceless value, as it had never been printed nor even copied. Mr. Vroom immediately deposited it in the State Library, where it is now kept in a fire-proof safe by the careful State Librarian. The State caused it to be copied and printed in 1872, but the copyist being unfamiliar with the peculiar chirography of the seventeenth century, many errors crept into the printed volume, and the lack of an index still further impaired its value. As the New Jersey Historical Society proposed to print the |