RC ; addressed: “Honble. Robert Treat Paine Esqr. Boston”; endorsed. Notes in RTP’s hand on the verso probably concerning this case. It is a partial draft indictment against Timothy Sherman for altering a deed in the land records of Worcester County concerning a land transfer from John Sherman to his son of the same name, the latter of Grafton, Mass. This case was heard at the Supreme Judicial Court at Worcester, Apr. 1786. In Commonwealth v. Timothy Sherman the defendant pleaded guilty, was fined £30, ordered to recognize in £100 for three years and to pay costs (Supreme Judicial Court Minute Books, Worcester County, Apr. 1786. Massachusetts Judicial Archives, Boston, Mass.).

Fisher Ames (1758–1808) graduated from Harvard (A.B., 1774) and began to practice law in Boston. He began to gain prominence through his public newspaper writings, starting with responses to Shays’s Rebellion in 1786. He became a leading Federalist and served several terms in the U.S. Congress. Later, when RTP served as a justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, Ames, not known for a pleasant disposition himself, referred to “the unpleasantness of Judge Payne’s manners and temper. He is almost intolerable.” After an uncomfortable scene in his court, Ames said that “no man could get there, unless he came with a club in one hand and a speaking-trumpet in the other” (American National Biography; Fisher Ames to John Worthington, Feb. 3, 1798, Grenville H. Norcross autograph collection, 1489–1937, MHS; Fisher Ames, Works of Fisher Ames, ed. Seth Ames [Boston, 1854], 1:225).