quotes the title only, with the note: [ This act is preserved in a MS. with which the Editor was furnished by Mr. Jefferson, late President of the United States, and was given to him by John Page, of Rosewell, whose grandfather, Mathew Page, had been employed on one of the revisals; but as the law agrees almost verbatim with the 1st. chap. of the acts of 1705, it is unnecessary to repeat it. It was limited in its duration to three years. ]

The footnote to the title of chapter 2 explains that this was the manuscript from which Hening printed these laws: The MS. used, in the acts of this session, is that referred to under chap. 1, and will be designated the “Page MS.” --It contains all the laws of 1710 and 1711, tho’ differently arranged from the printed revisal of 1733.

The third part, in a different handwriting, contains the acts for November 7, 1711, chapters 1-3; imperfect at the end and the first leaf misbound.

Jefferson’s description of this manuscript, in his letter to George Wythe, January 12, 1796, reads: “ M.S. given me by the present John Page of Rosewell. it had belonged to [ Mathew] Page his grandfather who was one of the commissioners of 1705. for revising the laws and was probably furnished with this copy for that work. ”

The manuscript was sent to Hening in June 1808, and its return acknowledged by Jefferson on April 8, 1815.

In another copy of Jefferson’s list, made by himself, and also in the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress, Jefferson has written in full the name Matthew Page, the grandfather of John Page of Rosewell.

Original vellum, lozenge shaped ornament in blind on the sides; on the back is written in ink: E / 1621 / Publiq; Letters / and Orders; on the front cover is similarly written: E and (upside down) John Bland / Richard Bland / Alexander Morrison. On the cover is written in ink by a later hand: 17 ^th. Century copie Bland . On a fly-leaf was written in pencil, but erased: [ The Bland MS. so called.]

According to Miss Susan Kingsbury in the Records of the Virginia Company, this volume was included in the 1815 sale to Congress. It is not in Jefferson’s manuscript catalogue, nor in the 1815 Library of Congress catalogue, and does not have the 1815 bookplate. It is not on Jefferson’s list to George Wythe in January 1796, nor on the list of books sent to Hening in June 1808. The book contains several of the charters to the Virginia Company, reprinted in Hening, and in Stith’s Appendix. Miss Kingsbury writes: Evidently this is a collection of correspondence of the colony, transcribed from the court books and from the miscellaneous papers of the three volumes of the manuscript records of the company .