“Tho: Dudley, Esq̃, is also chosen Deputy Gouñ^r for this yeare nexte ensuing, & did in p^rsence of the Court take an oath to his place belonginge.” And “to the end the body of the com̄ons may be p^rserued of honest & good men, it was likewise ordered and agreed that for time to come noe man shalbe admitted to the freedome of this body polliticke, but such as are members of some of the churches within the lymitts of the same.” The Law that all freemen must be church members, while assented to in Salem in 1631, was modified in 1632, probably for local reasons, that no civil magistrate could be an elder in the church. To give force to this law an Oath of Freemen was required, and this service the newly appointed Governor and the Deputy Governor elected to perform. The result of their labors, the original draft of the Oath of a Freeman, in the handwriting of the first and greatest of the Governors of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and the Oath of a Servant, in the handwriting of the second Governor—a document perhaps only surpassed in historical interest and importance by, and worthy to rank with, the Declaration of Independence—is now, appropriately, in the possession of the Public Library of the City of Boston, and its preservation assured. Through the courtesy of the Trustees, this Society is permitted again to give publicity to the excellent facsimiles of these interesting documents, together with transcriptions of the somewhat obscure handwriting, with interlineations and cancelled words showing, line for line, the changes made by the authors, which first appeared in the _Bulletin_ of the Library for July, 1894. THE OATH OF A FREEMAN, OR OF A MAN TO BE MADE FFREE.