Excerpt from Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, Vol. 1: June 11, 1680-June 22, 1699

That full copies were not sent over to England is inferred from the fact that the two orders given in the Appendix (see pp. 536 and dated 1680 and 1683, respectively, are not found among the proceed ings for those years transmitted in regular course, but in a paper con taining copy of the proceedings of the Council from September 25, 1680, to April 22, 1707, in reference to the boundaries of Virginia and North Carolina, sent over in 1708. With copies of these two orders were then sent copies of orders on the same subject dated 1688, 1690, and 1691, already transmitted. Evidently the Council did not at first think the omitted orders of sufficient importance to copy for trans mission, but changed their minds when the question of the boundary between Virginia and North Carolina became a burning one. Either that, or Mr. Secretary Jennings, who by order was also required to send important information to England, thought it best in 1708 to transmit copies of all orders of the Virginia Council in reference to the Virginia - North Carolina boundary.

The inference that there were omissions in the copies of proceed ings sent to England is also drawn from the fact that the Randolph Manuscript has abstracts of items not in the transcripts now being received from England, which must have been obtained by the com piler of the original Bland Manuscript from the original journals and not from the other record books of the Council in existence at the time the compilation was made. This hypothesis accounts also for the lack of strict chronological order of the entries, which is a notice able peculiarity of the text. The procedure probably was that the clerk of the Council copied the items he thought important and then, if on re-perusal of the journals he was convinced that something of value had escaped his attention made good the omission without re-copying the whole. After this, no doubt, on his reading to the Council for their approval what he had copied, the members and the Governor would call attention to still other items that might be considered of sufficient importance to copy for transmission.

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