John Bozman Kerr--of Easton, M^d
Law Office, no. 30. St. Pauls St. Balt^o
William Bladen, to whom the book is dedicated, was then clerk of the
Upper House and had been instrumental in bringing Thomas Reading to
Maryland. In fact, the records indicate that he assumed the role of
publisher. If John Bozman Kerr had had access to the proceedings of
the Lower House for the year 1700, he would have been most interested
to find there Bladen's written proposal:
That if the house are desirous the body of Laws should be
printed soe that every person might easily have them in
their houses without being troubled to goe to the County
Court house to have recourse thereto.
That the house made [sic] an Order for printeing thereof
and that every County be Oblidged to take one faire Coppy
endorsed and Titled to be bound up handsomely and that for
the encouragement of the undertaker each County pay him
therefore 2000^{lbs} of Tob^o upon delivery the said booke
of Laws....
This was approved on May 9.[6] The printing was not wholly
satisfactory, for on May 17 of the next year an errata list was
ordered printed.[7]
[Illustration: _John Bozman Kerr_, _from_ Genealogical Notes of the
Chamberlaine Family of Maryland (_Baltimore, 1880_).]
[Footnote 5: It is no. 7 in Lawrence C. Wroth's _A History of Printing
in Colonial Maryland_ (Baltimore, 1922). Besides listing it in his
bibliography, Wroth discusses the book at length on p. 22-26.]
[Footnote 6: _Archives of Maryland_, vol. 24 (1904), p. 83-84.]
[Footnote 7: Ibid., p. 198.]