1. The elder Madison and George Taylor petitioned the Assembly for the appointment of examiners of their accounts dating beyond 1765 (Vi: Petition of Taylor & Madison, 15 Nov. 1785). The House referred the petition to JM’s Committee for Courts of Justice, which reported a bill on 1 Dec. that was finally passed on 3 Dec., when Joseph Prentis carried it to the Senate (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. 1785, pp. 38, 53–54 and passim; Hening, Statutes description begins William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 (13 vols.; Richmond and Philadelphia, 1819–23). description ends , XII, 219). The business began at the Oct. 1765 session of the House of Burgesses (ibid., VIII, 166–68).

2. See JM to JM, Sr., 24 Dec. 1785.