[BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE XII.--For this chapter a large quantity of files and records of Massachusetts colonial and provincial courts has been examined. In the office of the Clerk of Courts for Middlesex county (Cambridge) have been used the _Records of the County Court for Middlesex_, 1649-86, 4 vols., MSS. folio, Vol. II missing; supplemented by the _Files of the County Court for Middlesex_, 1655-99; and followed by the _Records of the Court of General Sessions of the Peace for Middlesex_, 1692-1822, 9 vols., MSS. folio, the ninth volume containing also _Records of the Court of Pleas and General Sessions of the Peace_, October 1686, to March, 1688. In the office of the Clerk of the Supreme Judicial Court for the County of Suffolk (Boston) have likewise been examined the _Records of the Court of General Sessions of the Peace_, 1702-32, 4 vols., MSS. folio, with a fifth volume of fragments, 1738-80; the _Minute Books of the Court of General Sessions of the Peace_, January 3, 1743, to August 3, 1773, 5 vols., MSS. folio; the _Records of the Superior Court of Judicature, Court of Assize and General Goal Delivery in the Province of Massachusetts Bay_, 1692-1780, 33 vols., MSS. folio, Vol. II containing also the records of certain courts during the Andros period, 1686-87; and the _Early Court Files of Suffolk_, 1629-1800--being papers of colonial and provincial courts held in Suffolk county, of the Superior Court of Judicature held in the several counties, and of the Supreme Judicial Court prior to last century, with miscellaneous papers, the whole collection comprising several hundred volumes, of which only those for the period 1629-1730 have been covered by this investigation. Careful examination has also been made of the MSS. folio volume of _Records of the County Court of Suffolk_, October 1671, to April, 1680, in the possession of the Boston Athenæum. Very important are the published _Colonial Records of Plymouth_ (Boston, 1855-61); _Massachusetts Bay_ (Boston, 1853-54); _New Haven_ (Hartford, 1857-58); _Connecticut_ (Hartford, 1850-87); _Rhode Island_ (Providence, 1856 ff.); and the _Provincial, Town, and State Papers of New Hampshire_ (Concord, 1867-83).