While at Mount Vernon I delivered you the affidavit of T. Marshall stating that he never received the certificate which you were so obliging as to obtain for him & I now enclose you mine that I have lost it. I have no doubt that they will be sufficient to obtain the renewal of the certificate; but I believe that some bond must be executed before it can issue. I do not know how this is to be filled up & suppose it must contain a description of the certificate which I cannot make.

Your letter of the 12th was not answerd whilst I was in Phila. in consequence of my not receiving until a day or two before I left it, a conclusive reply from Mr Waln to my application respecting your sons.

In the letters lately addressed to you I have forgotten to mention a circumstance which deserves some attention. In the old books from which I extracted the facts composing the first volume I found our bay spilt thus—Chessapeake. Without any examination of the orthography I believe I have gone on to spell it in the same manner.

Your two letters under the dates of Dec 22 & Dec. 27, came to hand in course of the mail. I have recently receivd two letters from the Chief Justice, in which he permits me to conclude the first vol, at the end of the 13th Chapter, terminating with the War of 1763, & to carry the Surplus to the 2d vol. He also desires me to strike out two or three long notes, which he designates & requests me to suggest to him such others as I think might be dispensed with. I write to him, next Mail, fully on the subject.

Your letter of the inst came to hand in course of the mail, but as I had to write to Mr Marshall & to await his answer, I have not been able sooner to acknowledge it. – The complaints which you mention on account of the delay in the publication, give me great pain, particularly as it is unavoidable, and were the subscribers still more clamorous than they are, the work could not go on faster. If they had any conception of the labour & time required to examine many trunks of papers, they might perhaps be more considerate, tho' of this I should doubt.