With regard to this instrument we have had occasion to show, in one or two instances, that it was given by those who had received their title from Connecticut which title was abrogated by the transfer of the entire Oblong or Equivalent Lands to the Crown in 1731, and that the latter in 1752 granted Letters Patent to James Brown and William Smith for four thousands acres of land within the Oblong or Equivalent, consisting then of about eleven thousand acres of land, which were not included in or granted by Letters Patent 8th of June, 1731, to Thomas Hawley and others (the above grantors). We now see by the date of the above conveyance that it was not proved until twenty-two years after it was given, and it never has been recorded at all to our knowledge. The reason for proving it so late as 1774 was probably owing to the fact that James Brown, Jr., was conveying or had already conveyed the very same lands to the church. Yet we still find the said deed kept in abeyance for several years after the Revolution when it was most absurdly claimed that the " professors of the Church of England " were mixed into the "Presbyterian Society of Lower Salem."* Now it was, that the Board of Trustees moved the sale of those lands, as appears by the following record taken from their minutes in 1797 :

"At a meeting of Gould Bouton, Jacob Hayt, Enoch Mead, Nathan Adams and Abijah Gilbert, trustees of the church and congregation known by the name of the Presbyterian church and Congregation of the town of Lower Salem convened at the meeting house on the 14th day of February, 17S7. Together with the society, who being warned to meet to deliberate on matters which respect the Society.