traditions that had developed about domestic corporations which were already 
under conciliar control by act of Parliament. It probably did not even 
occur to the granting authorities that a patent appeal reservation was necessary. 
If it was conceived that operation in dominions outside the realm distinguished 
colonization patents from the domestic variety, there was probably a consciousness 
that under feudal theory the crown retained supervisory jurisdiction. 
For the relation of the crown to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man 
was still regarded as essentially feudal in nature. Further, reservation of any 
appeal to the King was not a customary element in the immediate precursor 
of the colonization patent, the trading company charters, although there was 
de facto recognition of this right. 267 The colonization companies operated 
under conditions vastly different from those usual to the trading companies; 
to a great extent this was not recognized by the granting authorities in their 
patents. 268 But some capital might be made of the clause frequently inserted 
that conferred upon English settler-inhabitants the rights of English subjects 
269 
Appellate review was a judicial luxury that few litigants in infant plantations 
could afford, separated as they were by miles of ocean from the appellate 
body, and hampered by lack of adequate transportation facilities. Moreover, 
societies in the process of formation are not forcing grounds of intricate legal 
questions. The ordinary subject of complaint will be about arbitrary action 
by executive-judicial governing bodies, usually a question of fact. Since the 
earliest charters reserved no appeals to the crown, the normal locus for appeal 
was to the home governing body or to the proprietor. During the career of the 
Virginia Company of London, in which the appellate function was vested, 
there was but one appeal or "complainte in nature of an appeale." This "appeal," 
by Captain Brewster from an October, 1618, sentence of a "Martiall 
Court" held by Captain Argall, resulted in a hearing by the Quarter Court 
of the company in May, 1620, when the sentence was voided. 270 Of more fre- 
267 Acts and Ordinances of the Eastland Company, 
xxii, lxxi-lxxiii, 155-59. 
268 The trading company charter usually contemplated 
operations in foreign territory under 
the rule of another sovereign with a judicial 
system controlled by such sovereign; the causes 
to be decided in the factories would be limited 
both in subject matter and in parties. But in 
the colonization charters there was contemplated 
no alien sovereign and no established 
court system. 
269 See Schlesinger, Colonial Appeals to the 
Privy Council, 28 Political Science Quarterly, 
287. For the charter provisions see inter alia 1 
Thorpe, op. cit., 51, 55; 3 ibid., 1681, 1839, 
1856-57; 7 ibid., 3788, 3800; 1 Lefroy, op. 
cit., 94. For discussion of the inherent right of 
the subject to appeal to the King see infra, pp. 
74-75, 140-44. 
270 The course of the appeal may be traced in 
1 Rec. Va. Co., 217, 219, 222, 226, 230, 273, 
3°9, 343, 358, 360-63, 365-67. 372. 374- The 
point in issue was the use of martial law by 
Argall, the deputy governor of the colony, to 
sentence Brewster for words spoken in a private 
dispute.