Sale 2455 - Printed & Manuscript Americana, September 28, 2017

324 c   (SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS.) Wilkes, John. Document ordering the attach- ment of an estate on Nevis. Document Signed “JohnWilkes,Mayor” and also byThomas Miller, with related partly-printed cover sheet bearing the mayor’s paper seal. 2 pages, 13 x 8 inches; folds, stitch holes, and minor wear. London, 14 December 1774 [300/400] This document bears the signature of London mayor John Wilkes as witness.Wilkes was a populist radical, and perhaps Great Britain’s most prominent supporter of the American independence movement. He witnesses an affidavit byThomas Miller concerning a bond signed by John AbelWard (a planter on the Caribbean island of Nevis) to two London merchants, enabling the merchants to collect their over- seas debt.The partly printed cover sheet (which clearly had once been stitched to the affidavit) cites the authority of “An Act for the more Easy Recovery of Debts in His Majesty’s Plantations,” also known as the Debt Recovery Act of 1732. 325 c   (WEST INDIES.) List of Spanish Ships Taken by His Ma’ty’s Squadron in theWest Indies with theirValue. One manuscript page, 10 3 / 4 x 6 1 / 4 inches; trimmed, with folds and minor foxing. Np, after 28 July 1728 [500/750] These ships were captured by the British Navy between May and September 1727 during the short Anglo-Spanish War. The list is summarized from a description made by Commodore Edward St. Lo, commander of the Jamaica Station. 7 Spanish merchant ships are described, some with the naval ship and master responsible for their capture, along with the price they fetched at auction in Jamaica. One was captured off Havana, another off Cartagena. E N D O F S A L E