University of Virginia Library

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44

CONTEMPORARY COPY OF THE COURT BOOK

The two volumes referred to by Mr. Jefferson as the "proceedings of the
Virginia Company in England" are the contemporary copies of the court book
which were secured by the Hon. William Byrd, of Westover, Virginia, from the
estate of the Earl of Southampton, either at the time of his death in 1667 or
later. Since Mr. Byrd was a boy of 15 living in London in 1667, it may have
been when the Virginia estates were left him in 1671, or even in 1687 when he
made a visit to England, that he made the purchase.[93] That the books remained
in the possession of the descendants of Mr. Byrd for a century is proved by
the fact that they are mentioned in a manuscript catalogue of the library of the
third William Byrd, who died in 1777,[94] but these two volumes were not in the
library of Colonel Byrd, when it was sold by his widow in Philadelphia to Isaac
Zane. Mr. Jefferson's statement that he purchased them from Colonel Bland may
be accepted,[95] but it would be difficult to prove whether he is equally reliable when
he states that the volumes had been loaned to Colonel Bland and had not been
returned by him to Colonel Byrd, or whether Mr. Deane is correct in saying that
Colonel Bland, as an antiquary, had secured them. That Stith used these contempo-
rary copies of the court book in his History of Virginia is apparent from his
description of them, as also from his statement that they had been communicated
to him by the "late worthy president of our council, the Hon. William Byrd, esq."[96]