xvi INTRODUCTION

or writs of error. In 1708 the commisssions of the justices of the county
courts extended their concurrent jurisdiction to include cases involving as
much as 30,000 pounds of tobacco or £ioo, and four years later¹ the ex-
clusive jurisdiction followed pace, attaining the maximum, to include cases
involving not more than 5,000 pounds of tobacco or £20. These last limits
were in force at the time of the discontinuing of the record. On the other
hand, for minor cases, jurisdiction was divided between the county courts
and justices of the peace sitting singly, the latter being given in 1699" ex-
clusive jurisdiction of cases of debts of not more than 200 pounds of tobacco
or i6s, 8d, and in 1715' of debts not exceeding double those amounts, 400
pounds of tobacco or 335, 4d. The convertible figures of tobacco and ster-
ling currency in these statutes, varying from 200 to 250 pounds of tobacco to
the pound sterling, give the valuations of the staple and exhibit the fluctuat-
ing and unsatisfactory nature of it as a medium of exchange.

A chancery court was held by the acting governor until 1661, assisted by
provincial court justices,⁴ and after that year, and until 1689, Philip Calvert,
one of the justices, and an uncle of the governor, presided as chancellor.
Other justices sat with him. In fact, despite a disposition to observe the
distinctions of the home country, the provincial court and the chancery
court, having the same judges, conducted business for some time after 1660
without clear separation of the two jurisdictions. The judges are found
taking one oath for service in both courts, and their sessions were opened
and recorded as sessions of both together. Attorneys were admitted to both
courts by one order, and business properly belonging to one court is found
disposed of under captions of the other. In 1692, the new royal governor
again set up a separate chancery court,⁵ consisting of a chancellor assisted by
several justices, and this endured until 1699, when royal instructions com-
pelled a reunion of the office of chancellor with that of governor. In all
appeals during the period covered by the present record after 1699, the
chancery court appears as a court of the governor, assisted by some of the
justices. The jurisdiction in chancery appears to have been without limits
until 1704, when the court was forbidden to hear, try, determine, or give
relief in causes wherein the amounts involved were under 1,201 pounds of
tobacco or £5-0-1.⁶

Over matters of probate and administration of estates of deceased
owners the governor and council as a court of appeals had no jurisdiction,
and it had none over admiralty or maritime cases. The present volume is
not, therefore, concerned with cases of either kind, or, indeed, with any

1 Act 1712, ch. i, Archives, XXXVIII, 143.

2 Act 1699, ch. 24, ibid., XXII, 500.

3 Act 1715, ch. 41, ibid., XXX, 320.

* Act 1638, ch. g, ibid., I, 49.

⁸ Archives, XX, 137.

« Act 1704, ch. 31, ibid., XXVI, 283.