at annapolis before revolution 53

this early Court of Appeals and the amount of
judicial business for which it held its sessions. It
is to be borne in mind that while the transactions
here described followed in the ways of a great
people, and an old civilization, they followed in
a distant settlement, where the people were few,
and their affairs small. The Provincial Court was
the great court of the province, and the court of
final appeal in all cases tried in the county
courts; and appeals beyond were out of the or-
dinary. The Provincial Court it was that brought
the citizens together to watch the combats of
lawyers, and the Governor and Council with their
court did not fill any considerable place in popu-
lar imaginations as a court, superior and power-
ful though they were. Until near the beginning
of the nineteenth century, the litigants seem to
have accepted more readily the results of single
trials without appealing.⁴⁵ In the Court of Ap-
peals from the May term, 1695, to the May term,
1700, a period of five years, twenty-two appeals,
in all, were docketed. Not until the May term,
1750, were there so many as seven appeals dock-
eted at one term. At the October term, 1768,
there were ten; at the May term, 1770, the number
rose to fifteen; and at the May term, 1776, it fell
back to seven. One slender folio easily contains
the .docket for all cases from 1695 to 1790, with
many continuances of cases adding to the entries.
The comparative smallness of business may be
more easily imagined from the fact that between
sessions the clerks then, and during part of the
nineteenth century, visited the court rooms only

45. See remarks of Chancellor Bland, 1 Bland, Ch. 679, note.