recognition in the 1679 Virginian instructions. 48 Later instructions to Virginia, 
Maryland, and New Hampshire all ordered that no appeals whatsoever be 
allowed from the Governor and Council to the Assembly. 49 But in Virginia 
this right of appeal from the General Court to the General Assembly, established 
by a 1642/3 statute, 50 was not yielded without protest. 51 
For our purposes it is not the provincial appellate process which is important, 
but the appeal to the King in Council from judgments of the Governor and 
Council. In the insular possessions, by the 1680 instructions to Barbados the 
governor was directed to signify royal disallowance of all laws restraining 
liberty of appeal to the King in Council, except those involving criminal causes 
and civil causes under X lOO i n cases m which security had not first been 
given by appellant to answer possible award of costs in case of affirmance. 62 In 
the 1681 Jamaica instructions it was provided that parties dissatisfied with appellate 
judgments of the Governor and Council might appeal therefrom to the 
King in Council, provided the sum involved exceeded £500. As conditions 
governing the appeal, it was provided that the appellant give security to answer 
48 Appeals were to be allowed from the colony 
courts to the Governor and Council "and to no 
other court or judicature whatsoever" (i 
Labaree, Royal Instructions, #442). This instruction 
for Virginia is alleged to have been 
a result of Bacon's Rebellion (G. L. Chumbley, 
Colonial Justice in Virginia [1938], 69), but 
the Lords Committee's journal makes no mention 
of such motivation (CO 391/3/340)- This 
practice of appeals from the Governor and 
Council to the Assembly had received statutory 
recognition in a March, 1661/2 act (2 Hening, 
Stat, at Large Va., 65-66), but this act was disallowed 
in 1682 (CSP, Col, 1681-85, #371; 
cf. Labaree, Royal Government in America 
[1930], 401-2). The instruction was apparently 
obeyed, for we find Governor Culpeper 
writing in December, 1681, that appeals from 
the General Court (Governor and Council) 
were formerly heard by the Assembly, but were 
now heard by the King in Council in great 
causes (CSP, Col., 1681-85, #3*9)- 
49 1 Labaree, Royal Instructions, #446. 
50 1 Hening, Stat, at Large Va., 272. A 1658/9 
act imposed a minimum limitation upon appeals 
to the Assembly (ibid., 519), but this 
was removed in the next year (ibid., 541). Cf. 
1 Bruce, Institutional History oj Virginia 
(1910), 690-93. 
51 Reading the Virginia Assembly journal of 
Nov. 10, 1682, the Lords Committee was of 
the opinion that an address in so far as it con- 
cerned appeals to the Assembly was altogether 
unfit for presentation to the King and that 
Lord Howard should be encouraged in his 
refusal to transmit such address to the King as 
desired (CO 391/4/55-56). Cf. on the objections 
to the Assembly acting as an appellate 
body, Journals of the House of Burgesses of 
Virginia, 1659/60-1693 (ed. H. R. Mcllwaine, 
1914), 167. Governor Howard, in April, 1684, 
refused to join the House of Burgesses in an 
address to the King that appeals lie as formerly 
from the General Court to the General Assembly, 
basing his objection on the terms of 
his instructions (ibid., 202-3; cf- ibid., 196-97, 
228). In May, 1691, a petition of the House 
to their Majesties prayed that this ancient appeal 
practice might be renewed, there being 
no other way to correct errors of the General 
Court in causes under £300. As for causes 
above this sum, the appeal allowed to the King 
in Council was impossible to put into practice, 
considering the great distance from England, 
the extraordinary troubles, hazard, and charge 
unavoidably attending the same, and the impossibility 
of bringing over evidences, records, 
and papers, etc. (ibid., 370; cf. 1 Bruce, op. 
cit., 693-96). 
52 1 Labaree, Royal Instructions, #443; see 
also CSP, Col, 1677-80, #1522; ibid., 1702, 
#1164. For formulation of the instructions see 
CO 391/3/203.