Description:

Massachusetts Bay Colony - Massachusetts Bay Colony 1705 legal document concerning broken apprenticeship contract with Harvard association

Single page document, partly printed and partly inscribed by many different hands, measuring 7.25" x 11.25". Dated March 4, 1705 from Boston and addressed to the Sheriff of Suffolk County from "Anne by the Grace of God, Of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith, &c". Signed among others by Attorney General of Massachusetts Paul Dudley (1675-1751) and legal clerk Addison Davenport (1670-1736) at bottom. Docketted and signed by Under Sheriff Winchomb verso. Seal located in upper left corner. In fair to good condition with expected wear to folds and minor torn edges.

The document concerns a disputed apprenticeship between defendant David Morey, a carter, and the plaintiff, Robert Howen, a laborer. Howen claimed to have entered into a 3-year apprenticeship with Morey in late March 1701. The terms of this arrangement included job training, ë£5, and care of Howen "in sickness and in health". Morey denied that he ever agreed to this contract, precipitating Howen's suit. This legal document amounts to a type of arrest warrant if Morey is unable to present ë£20 in bail money.

About ten days after this writ was issued, the trial participants were still at loggerheads; at left bottom: "The dt pleads to ha not broken the Covenant with the pt" and at right bottom: "the Plaintiff Replies that the Defend. has broke the Coven." Apparently, Morey was unable to scrape together the required ë£20, as a note verso indicates he was taken into custody on March 15, 1705. It is unknown whether the court session scheduled to take place the first Tuesday of April 1705 occurred.

Paul Dudley (1675-1751) was born in Roxbury, MA in 1675 and graduated from Harvard College fifteen years later. After studying law in London, Dudley returned to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to serve as its Attorney General between 1702 and 1718. Dudley later served as associate justice and finally chief justice of the province between 1745 and 1751.

Addington Davenport (1670-1736) was a fellow Harvard college graduate. At the time that this document was issued, Davenport served as a Clerk of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas. "So that Clerkship was his Employ for more than Twenty Years, and by his constant Diligence, Prudence, Skill and Faithfulness, he discharged every Part of it, to great Acceptance", recounted a 1736 newspaper obituary. Between 1698 and 1714, Davenport also served as Register of Deeds of Suffolk County. In 1715, Davenport and Dudley were selected as interim guardians of the colony seals. Davenport later served as a justice of the superior court along with Samuel Sewall (1652-1730).

A wonderful document relating to working class litigants of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, with an association to late seventeenth-century Harvard College!

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