Editorial Note

Neither the time, place, nor exact topic of these notes can be fixed with certainty. JM apparently jotted down the main ideas of two acquaintances, possibly Edmund Randolph and John Marshall, and in all likelihood at the time when a repeal of the act incorporating the Protestant Episcopal church was under consideration by the House of Delegates. If JM made these notes after hearing an informal discussion of the legal points involved, he may have wanted to keep a record of the main points brought forth by two respected lawyers concerning the alleged favoritism of the General Assembly toward the Protestant Episcopal church. John Marshall was not a delegate to the General Assembly at either the 1785 or 1786 sessions, but it seems reasonable to assume that JM valued his ideas on the subject, which arose in January 1786 when an effort was made in the legislature to amend the incorporation act passed at the October 1784 session. JM might have taken the notes for his own reference for the matter was sure to come up again, and did at the next session when the earlier act was repealed (JHDV description begins Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia; Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Williamsburg.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. 141, 143; 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, 266–67).