be held on the eighth
of June.

He also laid before the Council, the assigned business, which was
"accordingly attended, and divers persons, in the respective Counties
were named, and left for further consideration."

On the twenty-fifth of May, the Council being again in session, the
record says: "a further discourse was had about persons, in the several
Counties, for Justices and other officers, and it was judged advisable
to defer the consideration of fit persons for Judges, until there be an
establishment of Courts of Justice."

At the next meeting, on the twenty-seventh of May, it was ordered that
the members of the Council, severally, and their Secretary, should be
Justices of the Peace and Quorum, in the respective Counties where they
reside: a long list, besides, was adopted, appointing the persons named
in it Justices, as also Sheriffs and Coroners; and a SPECIAL COURT OF
OYER AND TERMINER was established for the Counties of Suffolk, Essex,
and Middlesex, consisting of William Stoughton, Chief-justice, John
Richards, Nathaniel Saltonstall, Wait Winthrop, Bartholomew Gedney,
Samuel Sewall, John Hathorne, Jonathan Corwin, and Peter Sargent, any
five of them to be a quorum (Stoughton, Richards, or Gedney to be one of
the five).

When we consider that the subject had been specially assigned on the
seventeenth, and discussed for two days, on the twenty-fourth and
twenty-fifth, to the conclusion that the appointment of Judges ought to
be deferred, "_until there be an establishment of Courts of
Justice_,"--which by the Charter, could only be done by the General
Court which was to meet, as the Governor had notified them, in less than
a fortnight--the establishment of the Court of Oyer and Terminer, on the
twenty-seventh, must be regarded as very extraordinary. It was
acknowledged to be an unauthorized procedure; the deliberate judgment of
the Council had been expressed against it; and there was no occasion for
such hurry, as the Legislature was so soon to assemble. There must have
been a strong outside pressure, from some quarter, to produce such a
change of front. From Wednesday to Friday, some persons of great
influence must have been hard at work. The reasons assigned, in the
record, for this sudden reversal, by the Council, of its deliberate
decision, are the great number of criminals waiting trial, the thronged
condition of the jails, and "this hot season of the year," on the
twenty-seventh of May! It is fur