North Carolina—88.
To His Excellency William Tryon, Esq., His Majesty’s Captain-General and Governor in Chief in and over the said Province, and to the Members of His Majesty’s Honorable Council.
The memorial of Benjamin Heron, Deputy Auditor of the said Province, humbly sheweth:
That on the 16th day of July last his Majesty’s Receiver-General sent down to your memorialist’s office by the hands of Mr. Green fourteen volumes in folio, bound in leather and two stitched-in sheets, desiring the said James Green would demand a receipt from me as Deputy Auditor for the said books as ledgers containing a rent roll of land as set forth in his memorial to your Excellency in Council the 24th of June, 1766, for the several and respective counties in his Majesty’s district of North Carolina, which your memorialist refused to do, not having been called upon properly before to examine the said books, nor having received positive orders from the Auditor-General with respect to receiving them into his office. Your memorialist, however, from the great appearance of rain, and to prevent books of such labor and consequence to the crown suffering by being exposed in an open cart, received the same into his custody and acknowledged by a memorandum delivered the said Mr. Green that the fourteen volumes of books in folio and two stitched-in sheets were left in the hands of your memorialist, the Deputy Auditor, to examine the same. Your memorialist, though very unequal in judgment to a task of that consequence, having since taken some pains to inspect and look over the said volumes intended as a rent roll, does not in his own opinion think the said books completely finished nor fit to receive into the auditor’s office as they now are.
Your memorialist, the Deputy Auditor, therefore humbly prays that as this is a work of too great consequence to the crown to rest on his judgment, he may be permitted to lay before your Excellency and Honors one or two volumes of the said rent roll, so that he may
be indulged with the opinion of this Honorable Board if the said books are in proper condition to be received into the auditor’s office under the name of a rent roll, as they now are. And your memorialist as in duty bound will ever pray.