James Madison Papers
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Madison and William Grayson to Rufus King, 11 March 1787

Madison and William Grayson to Rufus King

N. York March 11th 1787

Mr. M & Mr Grayson present their complts to Mr. King and beg leave to inform him that the doors of the Assembly were shut on a letter from Col Carrington & Col. Lee, which Mr. Grayson saw but did not sign for reasons irrelative to the present subject.1 Mr. M. was in the Legislature at the time and knows the cause was very different from the one mentioned to Mr. King. Both of them are satisfied that no such information was contained in the letter from the before mentioned Gentlemen, or as far as they know or believe in any other written by them or any other person to the Legislature of Virginia.

FC (DLC). In JM’s hand. Unsigned.

1This was probably the letter of 8 Dec. 1786 from Edward Carrington in which he informed Gov. Edmund Randolph of events in Massachusetts as well as of British influence in the internal affairs of Vermont and Massachusetts (Burnett, Letters description begins Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (8 vols.; Washington, 1921–36). description ends , VIII, 516–18). Henry Lee could not have been an author of the letter, since he had left New York about 20 Nov. (Henry Lee to JM, 20 Dec. 1786). Carrington’s letter, which was probably among those sent to the House of Delegates by Randolph on 29 Dec., did not discuss monarchical tendencies or any information bearing on the subject of King’s letter, although Randolph found the contents of the letter significant enough to enjoin the legislature to secrecy (JHDV description begins Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Williamsburg. Beginning in 1780, the portion after the semicolon reads, Begun and Held in the Town of Richmond, In the County of Henrico. The journal for each session has its own title page and is individually paginated. The edition used is the one in which the journals for 1777–1786 are brought together in two volumes, with each journal published in Richmond in either 1827 or 1828 and often called the “Thomas W. White reprint.” description ends , Oct. 1786, p. 129; Burnett, Letters description begins Edmund C. Burnett, ed., Letters of Members of the Continental Congress (8 vols.; Washington, 1921–36). description ends , VIII, 516 n. 4).

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