INTRODUCTION xxxiii

was at the southern boundary of the province, and Annapolis was 75 miles
farther up the bay.

In 1693, the new, royal governor, Lionel Copley, was instructed from
England to permit appeals to the governor and council in civil causes involv-
ing more than £100, and, further, in causes involving more than £300, to al-
low appeals to the King in Council, with a proviso that the appeal to England
should not suspend execution; the method and limitation upon appeals to
the governor and council, he was instructed, should be prescribed by
statute.¹ In the following year, the council at St. Mary's called into con-
ference the attorneys who were then in town, Robert Smith, the speaker of
the house of burgesses, or lower house, the attorney general, George Plater,
and Kenelm Cheseldyne, William Dent, and Charles Carroll, and took their
opinion on the organization of this jurisdiction. They concluded it with a
statement that:

wee humbly Signifie that Wee take it to be Against the Current and the Meaning
of the Law and incongruous of itself, to have the Same persons Judges in the
Prov¹¹ Court as also Judges in the Councill for the Motion of Appealing or Writts
of Error is to except Against the Judgments of these Judges that gives Judgm⁴,
and Appeale to other Judges in a Superior Court which plainly Supposes different
p^rsons.²

It was a repetition in part of a complaint against Lord Baltimore's adminis-
tration made by leading Protestants to the king in iGgi.³ The objection
was met, but only gradually; none of the justices of the provincial court
appointed in October, 1694,* and few appointed later, were members of
the council. Pursuant to the royal instructions, a new, comprehensive
statute was passed in 1694, re-enacting provisions for appeals from the
county courts, as they had been enacted in 1692," and adding the regula-
tions for the further appeals. The second half of that statute was devoted to
the higher appeals.

The methods and rules that governed prosecution of appeals to the pro-
vincial court were to govern in proceedings for review by the governor and
council, and thus, for removal to the higher court as well as for removal from
a county court to the provincial court, the two forms were preserved — that
by writ of error and that by appeal without the formal writ, with an assign-
ment of errors or reasons for appeal in each case. It had been enacted much
earlier that there should be no supersedeas or stay of judgments of county
courts in cases removed to the provincial court unless appellants should give
bond in double the sums adjudged against them, and it was now enacted that

1 Archives, XXIII, 540, 548.

2 Ibid., XX, 135, 136.

s Ibid., VIII, 219.

4 Ibid., XX, 137.

B Act 1692, ch. 9, ibid., XIII, 444.