(QUEEN ANNE'S WAR) | An Act for Reviving and further continuing … the Act Entitled, An Act to prevent the Deserting of the Frontiers of this Province. … [Boston, 1706]

Property from the Eric C. Caren Collection

(QUEEN ANNE'S WAR)

An Act for Reviving and further continuing … the Act Entitled, An Act to prevent the Deserting of the Frontiers of this Province. … [Boston, 1706]

Folio, 6 pages (11 3/8 x 7 1/2 in.; 290 x 190 mm), numbered 291-296, removed from a volume of Acts and Laws, Passed by the Great and General Court or Assembly of Her Majesties Province of Massachusetts Bay in New-England; begun and held at Boston upon Wednesday the Twenty-ninth Day of May, 1706; browned, dampstained. The consignor has independently obtained a letter of authenticity from PSA that will accompany the lot.

Arming for war, even during "Publick Worship on the Lords-Day." In the middle of Queen Anne's War, the second of the French and Indian struggles for control of North America, frontier colonists of Massachusetts Bay are ordered to take extraordinary measures to be prepared for hostilities. "[D]uring the time of this present War, all Persons with their Families, shall abide at the particular Garisons … whereto they are orderly assigned … by the Military Commission Officers and the Select-men of the Town. … And no person capable of bearing Arms, being placed as aforesaid in any Garison Erected … shall desert the same. … And that all Male Persons in the Frontiers, capable of bearing Arms, shall carry their Arms with them and be well provided for their defence, when they go to the Publick Worship on the Lords-Day, or other times: And also when they go abroad to Work; On pain of forfeiting Five Shillings for each neglect, to be to the use of the Town, towards the procuring of Arms or Ammunition." Early eighteenth-century colonial printing is increasingly scarce in the market.