Five hundred copies of this volume have been printed from type and the type distributed. Direct. 11-2-1922 gen. INTRODUCTORY NOTE THE following list grew out of small beginnings. When in the Public Library of the City of Boston I amused myself in noting any broadside issued in Massachusetts between the years 1774 and 1783, on a half-formed scheme of utilizing the items in a study of the civil aspects of the War for Independence. The list was not completed and later, in the Library of Congress, was added to only as occasion offered, on no systematic plan. The growing interest in broadside material has suggested a full check-list, which would be a better guide were it extended to include all broadsides issued in Massachusetts from the earliest introduction of printing into the colony to the year 1800. On consulting Evans' American Bibliography I estimated that double the number there recorded would be ample, but I was soon obliged to alter my opinion, and the result in numbers speaks for itself. In England the broadside served many purposes in the sixteenth century. From a proclamation by the King, or an act of Parliament, to a notice of a town by-law, authority used it to inform officials and the people of duties and regulations. In controversy, political or personal, the broadside served as a weapon of offence and defence, costing little and lending itself readily to a quiet circulation, difficult to counter or to trace to its source. The news-sheet, out of which came the newspaper of to-day, was probably suggested by the broadside, and soon supplanted the broadside on mere matters of news, but by no means deprived it of a wide field of service. Poets put out ballads which, if popular, proved profitable to printer and hawker; satires, directly or indirectly levelled against abuses, wrongs or individuals, if spiced with wit or humorthe broader the better gave an opportunity to start a reform, gratify revenge, retort to impudence or smother an opponent in ridicule. The newspaper "extra" of to-day was foreshadowed in the leaflet announcing a battle on land or sea, the death of a royal personage, a voting list on a measure of wide importance, a brutal murder or a dying confession. The 410087 collections in the Chetham Library, Manchester, in the Society of Antiquaries of London and in Lord Crawford's library, indicate frequent and effective resort to this form of issue and the various forms it assumed.1 The earliest examples of English broadsides that have survived were associated with church and papal authority. The first known printed royal proclamation, issued in the year 1486, contained the papal Bull in favor of Henry VII, known only by an imperfect copy in the Society of Antiquaries of London. There exist a number of plenary indulgences issued under directions of the pope in the opening years of the sixteenth century, but not until 1640 was the earliest known political sheet printed-"A Balade agaynst malycyous Sclaunderers"--which was a defence of the memory of Thomas Cromwell. From that time the use of the broadside becomes increasingly common, and covered a large number of purposes. Massachusetts did not take kindly to the broadside, though the first issues of its press were in that form of official regulations. It was long before a broadside other than of government or of college was used for personal or mortuary ends. The earliest known issue of the press set up in Cambridge was in the form of a broadside the "freeman's oath" (1639) — and twenty years passed before the first known sheet of "verses" appeared in 1659. Nearly the same time elapsed before the broadside on smallpox was issued, probably by the aid or direction of government, and that is one reason for doubting "Innocency's Complaint" (1677) as an issue of the New England press. If a genuine issue it stands as the first political broadside in New England, not to be repeated until the coming from England of Benjamin Harris, whose experience at home had given him a thorough knowledge of the use and abuse of broadside literature, an experience he was to repeat in Massachusetts. As the idea of a Massachusetts news-sheet came from him, it is more than probable that he introduced the broadside other than official or mortuary. For nearly a century this form of publication enjoyed a somewhat uncertain existence, if what has survived offers any test of use and popularity. Government adopted it and in time of war extended its availability, partly because of the quick and ready printing and dispersion of the sheets, partly because of the saving they made in the preparation of reports and returns, both civil and military. Even in this last de1 Catalogues of these three collections of broadsides have been printed. scription of document recognition of its convenience was slow. The ship's paper issued by Randolph in 1688 is the earliest instance, and suggests a foreign usage introduced by the King's commissioner. Law blanks are found about the same time, and merchants used printed bills of lading in 1683. The funeral verses, which were pinned to the pall covering the coffin, represent the earliest personal employment of the broadside, and those on Mrs. Minot (1667) were the first to show the roughly engraved border with its cut suggestive of mortality, for many years in favor. Sewall, for a time censor of the press, was fond of indulging his turn for verse printed on a single leaf, but his example does not appear to have been followed by others. The eighteenth century (1704) had come before the first account of behavior and dying speeches of criminals is found, unadorned with any cut or even with the heavy mourning borders. The development of illustration by woodcut was not rapid. The colony seal, the work of John Foster, appeared in 1676, and the royal arms on a proclamation issued by Andros and printed by Richard Pierce in 1688, again a direct importation of usage and perhaps of the engraved block itself by a royal representative. But after a single use of the royal arms the colony seal resumed its place on government papers, not to be again displaced until 1692, when Benjamin Harris, the most enterprising printer Boston ever had, brought in the royal arms. Not until 1718 was a cut intended as a true illustration employed, and the experiment could hardly have been profitable, as the second instance is found in 1732, in connection with an execution on Boston Neck. By that time the populace were content to have its palate and eye thus morbidly tickled and each printer had his execution block which could be modified to suit a single or a double hanging. Whether poverty of design, absence of taste or expense of cutting the block retarded the use of engraving in printing is a question not to be answered here; it was long before Hurd, Turner, Pelham, and Revere showed what could be done in that direction. The list points to Thomas Hancock, a bookseller, as the first to use a store-card, and the later one (1748) of Joseph and Daniel Waldo, engraved by James Turner, is on an unexpectedly elaborate scale. To indicate the beginnings and growth of the woodcut designs a few of them are reproduced. The use of the same cut a number of times and at wide intervals of time, even by different printers in different places, offers a |