Fully a quarter of a century ago, while engaged in making a search for early printed American publications in the Catalogue of printed books in the British Museum—a great and monumental work, worthy in its scholarly completeness of the Government which fostered its publication, and of inestimable importance and benefit to scholars in every land—the following entry under the heading “Freeman” seemed to me to warrant more than passing observation and curiosity which the intervening years have failed to satisfy: —The Oath of a Freeman. B. L. [_London_, 1645?] _s. sh._ 12º. 11,626. aa. (1, 2.) An analysis of this entry seems to show points of resemblance following closely the known facts regarding the first work printed in this country. The title is the one given by John Childe presumably from the earliest printed copy in his possession. The abbreviated title, freemen’s oath, as given by John Winthrop, first appearing in the Code of 1648, which seems to justify the belief that Winthrop wrote his Journal some years after the press was established. The letters B. L. indicate that the printed text is in black-letter. While there is no evidence of the number and kinds of fonts of type purchased for the first press by Joseph Glover, there is an itemized statement of the number and names of the fonts of type for the second press sent over later by the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians in New England, for printing the Bible in the Indian language, and among them is a small font of “blacks,” i.e. black-letter, which would indicate that a small font of that letter was generally considered a part of the equipment of a printing-office of the period. Even if this was not so, on the good authority of Isaiah Thomas, the type used in printing the Bay Psalm Book, of 1640, was “small bodied English,” a type commonly used for works in quarto and folio, which approximates in size to black-letter, but without the ceriphs, or fine projecting points of that letter. It is not unreasonable to suppose that a cataloguer might, hastily, consider the thickly inked, heavy press-work we find in the Bay Psalm Book, under the same conditions in a somewhat crudely printed sheet, to be black-letter printing.