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Lower Norfolk County was established in 1637. It was the parent county of Norfolk and Princess Anne counties, which today have been superseded by the metropolises Chesapeake City and Virginia Beach. John A. Brayton's newest series of publications anticipates the transcription of Lower Norfolk County's extant colonial records. This is Volume Two of that series; Volume One: Wills & Deeds, Book D, 1656-1666 was published in 2008.

Whereas the inaugural volume was primarily a verbatim accounting of the county's oldest extant wills and deeds, this volume is more wide-ranging. According to Mr. Brayton, this book is a complete documentation of the activities of the county court, encompassing wills, deeds, court minutes, and court orders. Included are the usual tales of drunkenness and cruelty, of voyages to parts beyond the seas, of servants' attempts to escape their masters, and of a number of accounts of inhabitants "who had enjoyed the benefits of marriage with their partners before the fact of the sacrament itself."

Besides the records themselves, Mr. Brayton provides a key to handwriting peculiarities of the era, a list of abbreviations and their meanings, and two indexes--the first a name index to the roughly 5,000 individuals mentioned in the documents, and the second an index to all places, vessels, and slaves contained therein.