Series consists of rough minutes, 1792; draft Orders-in-Council [sic], 1792; and proceedings of the Executive Council, 1805-1817. The records form rather a miscellaneous series of documents produced or accumulated by the Clerk of the Executive Council. When the Clerk retained copies of reports written into the minutes, those documents are generally found in this series or in the Records of the Civil and Provincial Secretaries, Quebec, Lower Canada and Canada East fonds (RG 4), series A1. The records deal, for the most part, with the state-related functions of the Executive Council. A similar type of record dealing with the land-related functions of the Executive Council is found elsewhere within this fonds, in the Land Petitions and Related Records of the Executive Council series.
The records described as "draft Orders-in-Council" (vol. 2) are, in fact, translations into French by J. F. Cugnet of selected extracts from Executive Council minutes and Instructions issued to Dorchester. The documents note that the translations were done on the orders of Lieutenant-Governor Clarke. Council minutes indicate that the documents in question were read in Council in both languages and the Clerk given the liberty to deliver copies in either language. This presumably helps explain the translation of these particular records and not other Council minutes.
The records described as "proceedings of the Executive Council, 1805-1817" (vol. 3) are rough reports of committee deliberations (not rough minutes of the full Executive Council proceedings). They bear many strike-outs and notes by the Clerk of Council concerning management of documents presented at meetings. Entries are divided into two distinct periods, 1805 and 1814-1817. While the information contained in this volume does not add anything to knowledge of Council actions, the document does provide a small insight into the administrative workings of the Council and its committees. The entries in the first part of the volume (those which date from 1805) document the activities of a "Special Committee" which was appointed by Lt-Governor Milnes in Council on 18 February 1805 in order to deal with a particular problem of a backlog of outstanding Council state business and the inability of the committee of the whole Council to handle the work. This Special Committee became, in effect, a sub-committee of Council, reporting on the matters of outstanding state business to the committee of the whole Council, which in turn presented its recommendations to the Governor and Council. This Special Committee presented eleven reports to the committee of the whole, and through it ultimately to Council, over the period February-July 1805. When Milnes left the province in August 1805, the activities of the Special Committee were suspended. The rationale behind the resumption of use of the book during the years 1814-17 has yet to be determined. However, it is clear from the terminology found in the entries that it was used during those years to record, in a rough fashion, the deliberations of the committee of the whole on both land and state matters, and not for rough or draft versions of the minutes of the full Council.
