Introduction.             xix

        sion of the judgemt aforesaid hath lost be restored,” (post, p. 350). At once
        Stockett asked and got a writ of error and supersedeas to have his case argued
        before the Upper House, of which all the justices of the Provincial Court were
        members, and he gave security to prosecute (post, p. 354). The Chancellor
        ordered that the writ of error be stopped until Peca or his attorney be heard
        (Archives LI, pp. 278-280) and until Stockett gave better security. The record
        does not show that this was ever done. There was no session of Assembly
        from June 15, 1676 until October 20, 1676 or from November 15, 1678 until
        August 16, 1681 (Archives VII, p. 109). The idea of the Upper House of
        Assembly sitting also as a court did not seem strange to the seventeenth-century
        Englishmen who were in charge of the government of the Province, even when
        some of the members of the Upper House were also judges of the Provincial
        Court. August 26, 1681, ten days after the Assembly began to sit again,
        Stockett presented to the Upper House a Petition for the confirmation of the
        judgment he had had against Peca on October 17, 1676, and for the quashing
        of all judgments Peca had obtained against him. To this petition his Lord
        ship, then in the Province, said “fiat justitia”. November 28, 1681 Peca's at
        torney, Robert Carvile, assented to the writ of error (Archives VII, pp. 127-
        128, 244). That assent implies that more was to come, but, if it did, it is not
        set forth in these records.
         The case of Howell's Executors v. George Wells, which arose in Cecil
        County, was similar to that of Peca v. Stockett, but it did not take so long to
        decide. It came to the Provincial Court on writ of error and certiorari, and
        when the executors had filed their errors, defendant Wells appeared on April
        28, 1677 by his attorney, and the case was ordered to come to trial next court
        (Archives LXVI, p. 489). At the next court after April 1677, the one that
        met on June 19, 1677, it was continued (post, p. 39) until October court;
        October 5, 1677 it was continued until December; December court was ad
        journed until February 12, 1677/8; February 22 the case was continued until
        April (post, p. 179); April 11, 1678 the case was again continued until next
        court. On June 17, 1678 the case came to trial. Wells had said that Capt.
        Thomas Howell, father of John and Nathaniel, owed him 2267 pounds of
        tobacco (of which 30 pounds was for pills, 6o pounds for a “pectorall Julip”
        and 40 pounds for one cordial), and the county court had ordered that the debt
        be paid out of Howell's estate. The sons said that they had not been summoned
        to the Cecil County court, and that therefore the trial there was extra-judicial
        and illegal. They said furthermore that when they were not summoned and
        given a chance to defend themselves, they were condemned unheard “which
        is expressly agt the twenty eighth Chapter of the Statute of Magna Charta”
        (post, p. 353). As to the account Wells had presented, it had not been proven
        in any way, to that he was in the position of being his own carver, of deciding
        for himself what his portion should be. Howell's executors therefore asked
        that the judgment be revoked and that they be restored to what they had lost.
        At the June 1678 trial, the Court listened to what both sides had to say, and
        “considered that the judgemt aforesaid be revoaked adnulled & altogether held
        for nothing And that the said John Howell & Nathaniell Howell unto all things