AT annapolis before revolution 27

The jurisdiction to review decrees in Chancery
was under this act of 1694 construed to be a limited
one. Only decrees in suits to relieve of judgments
at law might be reviewed and examined by the
Governor and Council, and the three applications
for such review during the succeeding twenty-five
years were in cases of that description.⁷ In 1720
there were two of them, and in the second, in the
case of Thomas Bordley v. John Gresham, the ap-
pellant, Bordley, after having made his applica-
tion to the Governor for the statutory review, re-
turned with a petition that his application be now
changed into an appeal, conformably to an act of
assembly just passed allowing appeals from de-
crees in Chancery. It was a provision in the act of
1721, chapter 14, section 3, allowing the appeals
from and after the end of the session. The distinc-
tion between the scope of review in chancery cases
and that in common law cases which had always
prevailed in England, facts as well as law being
considered in chancery appeals,⁸ was observed
here from the outset, even in the cases for review
considered before the act of 1721.

After having started the statute of 1694 on its
way to passage, the Governor and Council asked
the judges who then sat in the Provincial Court,
and the lawyers, to give their opinions as to the
time of sessions of the Chancery Court, and of the
Council for hearing appeals. The unanimous
opinion⁹ was that it would be much more con-
venient " that the Court of Governor and Council

7. Liber H. D. No. 1, 187, 342, 367.

8. Holdsworth, I, 372.

9. Archives, Proc. Council, 1693 to 1696/7, 560, 561.