INTRODUCTION xliii

and the provincial court should then hear the cause and either party might ap-
peal. Bordley had filed a suit in the provincial court in the preceding year, in
indebitatus assumpsit for freight alleged to be due; Dulany, for Forward, appeared
and answered simply nil dicit; and on September 20, 1720, judgment was entered
in Powlson's favor for £600 and specified amounts of tobacco for damages and
costs. Attachments on the judgment were issued, and goods of Forward's in the
hands of factors and agents of his were seized in amounts sufficient to cover the
judgment several times over. Additional general writs were issued, but were
returned marked nulla bona. Thomas Cockey, an agent of Forward's, was one in
whose hands an attachment was laid. Dulany, for Forward, then appealed from
the judgment to the Court of Appeals, but gave no bond for a stay or super-
sedeas, apparently thinking that the order of the Privy Council rendered it un-
necessary. Bordley obtained an order for condemnation of the goods attached,
and Dulany, for Forward and Cockey, appealed to the governor and council from
the condemnation, but failed on the appeal. Cockey was lodged in jail upon a
capias ad satis-aciendum, and, to save himself and Forward's assets, gave Powlson
a bill of exchange on Forward for £600.

With the release of Powlson from jail as a languishing prisoner * and the
conveyance of all his assets to the sheriff for sale to pay his debts, the bill of
exchange was bought by Bordley in his own name; and from that point he became
the litigant on the offensive side. He sent the bill to England, but it was dis-
honored and protested for non-payment, and returned to the province. Forward
filed a bill in chancery in the province praying that the bill of exchange be
stopped until the questions on appeal should be decided, and upon dismissal of
his bill in chancery appealed to the provincial Court of Appeals. That court re-
fused to impound the bill meanwhile.

The Court of Appeals, in Powlson's original suit from the provincial court,
for freight, affirmed the judgment, and an appeal to the King in Council was
entered for Forward.

Bordley proceeded against Cockey as drawer of the bill of exchange for £600,
and Cockey, to stave off loss and possible incarceration, gave Bordley another
bill, dated May 27, 1724, this time for £720, to cover the bill for £600 and the
damages and costs, and at the same time gave bond to secure payment of the new
bill, with Robert Gordon and William Rogers as sureties. For further security
John Moale, another agent of Forward's, gave Bordley a note of his own for
20,000 pounds of tobacco and £50.

In London, Forward was meanwhile protesting to the Privy Council that its
order of August, 1720, was being disregarded; and the council demanded an
explanation from the deputy governor in Maryland.² On June 17, 1724, the
appeal in Powlson's original suit for freight was heard by the Privy Council, and
the judgment was reversed. There was some discussion in the province of a sug-
gestion mat Dulany, for Forward, should have sought settlement of the difficul-
ties of his client in the admiralty proceeding, but Dulany explained his course of
action.³ On the other hand, when the decision of the Privy Council, reversing

1 Act 1721, ch. 18, Archives, XXXVIII, 305.

2 A. P. C., Col., II, 781-782.
s Archives, XXV, 432.