at st. mary's 7

Upper House, possibly from a greater attendance.
That, however, there was an incongruity in ap-
peals from a group of judges to themselves under
another name did not escape the lawyers of the
province, as they declared in an opinion to the
Governor and Council late in the century.

In some of the mid-seventeenth century records
the Governor and Council, or Upper House, when
so engaged in hearing appeals, were described as
sitting as a "Court of Appeals",¹² but the term was
merely descriptive and was not an official title.
The word "court" then, and for more than a cen-
tury longer, was used in its older and broader
meaning of any meeting or assemblage.

In 1681, as has been noticed, a question of the
continuation of this earlier seventeenth century ap-
pellate practice came up for discussion in the Up-
per House.¹³ On November 5 of that year, the
House, reciting that several writs of error upon
judgments in the Provincial Court, and returnable
in the Upper House, were pending, but were not
legally brought before the House according to the
manner of bringing writs of error in Parliament,
and considering that there was:

no law in this province yet made directing how and in what
manner writs of error shall be brought in Assembly against the
judgment of the Provincial Court, and there being no Statute of
Jeofails yet made in this province, and the last Statute of Jeo-
fails made in England¹⁴ not altogether remedying all errors
and things necessary to be remedied in this province, and the
words in the said act (not being against the right of the nature

12. Thomas, Chronicles of Colonial Md., 143.

13. Archives, Proc. Assembly, 1678 to 1683, 224.

14.. 16 and 17 Charles II, c. 7 and 8. The statutes of jeofails con-
tained provisions for amending or ignoring omissions or defects
in proceedings. See Holdsworth, I, 223 and note 5.