In 1671, the General Court directed the revision and publication of the laws of the colony. Until that time the laws had always been printed at the expense of the commonwealth. But a wealthy bookseller, by the name of John Usher, applied for permission to publish them on his own account; and to prevent Green from printing extra copies for himself, he procured the passage of an act prohibiting the printing of any more copies than he should direct; and in this enactment we find the origin of copyright in this country. In 1673, the copyright was secured to Usher for seven years. Green soon became a prolific printer. He came to this country so destitute as to be obliged to sleep under the shelter of a barrel; but lived to an advanced age, and had two wives and nineteen children. He was early in life elected an ensign of the Cambridge militia company, and subsequently rose to the rank of captain, under which commission he served thirty years. So exceeding fond was he of his martial life, that, when extremely old, he was carried to the parade ground in a chair to direct the exercises of his company. Some of his descendants have been engaged in the printing business for more than a century past in Connecticut. Others of his family established their business at Annapolis, in Maryland, in 1740, where it has been continued by their descendants until the present day. The partner of the elder Green, for a number of years, was Marmaduke Johnson, who had been sent over from England by the Commissioners of Indian affairs to assist in printing the Bible in the Indian language. He turned out badly, however, and, in two years after his arrival, was tried and convicted of making an unlawful _impression_ upon Mr. Green's daughter. The charge in the indictment was 'for alluring the daughter of Mr. Samuel Green, printer, and drawing away her affection, without the consent of her father.' This was a direct breach of the law of the colony; for in those good times, no young lady might venture to fall in love without, like a dutiful child, asking her father's consent. But Johnson was doubly guilty, since he had a wife in England. He was therefore fined five pounds, and ordered to go home to his first love. This order, however, was for a time evaded; and he afterward found means of procuring a reconciliation with Green--his wife having probably died in the mean time--and of entering into a partnership with the father of his American charmer. Her prudent father, however, as is most likely, obliged her to leave off loving him, since the chronicles of those days say that the inconstant typographer was married in 1770 to Ruth Cane of Cambridge. He then began to look up in the world, and was elected to the office of constable, which in those days was much more elevated than that of sheriff is now.