lawfull money of New England well and truly to be paid by virtue of these presents. In witness whereof the partys above-named to these present Articles interchangeably have Set their hands and Seals the day and yeare first above written. JOHN BATEMAN. [Seal] Signed Sealed & Delivd in presence of John Hayward scr Eliezer Moody Servt Owned in Court p Bateman 27 April 1680 p Is Addington Cler Vera Copia Attestd Is Addington Cler --_Suffolk County Judicial Court Files, No. 1916._ NOTE. This contract provides for the frame of a house and not for a complete building. But it is of unusual interest for it supplies proof of the existence in Boston of a house having two gables on each side of the roof, _i.e._, six gables on a rectangular building twenty-seven by thirty feet in size. Robert Taft, of Braintree, an ancestor of ex-President Taft, delivered the frame, but before he had completed the work Bateman entered into possession and set his carpenters at work to finish the building. Taft brought suit to recover payment for the frame and the Court gave a verdict in his favor, from which Bateman appealed. From the testimony it appears that on the ground floor there were two rooms, one of which was eleven by twenty-four feet, and a space nine by eight feet had been left in which to build the chimney. The "articles of agreement" required that Taft provide for fourteen windows but he put up "six more than my Couanant was." Bateman, on the other hand, claimed that the frame was "the weakest slenderest and most dozed timber that hath been Seen ... most of the timber Wany & on many of the Sumers the Bark left on to make it square and wch Indeed was the Occasion of all this Trouble." This house was built for a "shop keeper" and probably the long front room on the ground floor was to be used for a shop. It was located at what is now the southeasterly corner of North and Blackstone streets, the canal to the mill pond being on the northerly end of the house and the harbor behind it. CONTRACT TO BUILD THE FIRST KING'S CHAPEL, BOSTON JULY 21, 1688