EREMY GRIDLEY is remembered chiefly as the Crown Attorney who in 1761 opposed his former pupil, James Otis, in the famous debate over the granting of the Writs of Assistance. Otis is remembered as a fiery patriot, though of course in 1761 he was an incipient revolutionist. From time to time Gridley has been branded as a Tory, but unbiased historians generally agree that in defending the British claim he was simply doing his duty as the duly appointed attorney for the Crown, and, in the words of John Adams, another of his law students, everything that could be said in favor of Cockle's petition; all depending, however, the 'if the Parliament of Great Britain is the sovereign legislature of all the British Empire.' 1 Before he became famous as a lawyer, however, Jeremy Gridley was known to his fellow Bostonians as a young man of literary tastes and as an editor. In his thirty-first year he established a paper called The Weekly Rehearsal, which, like its contemporary, The New England Weekly Journal, but unlike the more prosaic News-Letter, frequently contained essays on various subjects. The first issue appeared September 27, 1731, and writers the subject generally agree that Gridley's original contributions continued for at least six months. Isaiah Thomas, the historian of early American printing, states that before the termination of one year, its original essays were discontinued, and it had become a mere vehicle of intelligence. 2 This statement is not entirely accurate, as will be shown. The one thing that is certain about Gridley's connection with the paper is that he retained