Raines, holding the same judicial position, also was of the opinion, in 1687, that the High Court of Admiralty was not a court of appeal and that no relief could be obtained against an admiralty court condemnation in the Leeward Islands, except by exercise of the royal prerogative. 05 Upon this opinion, an appeal to the King in Council was allowed the reclaimant in the Antigua Vice-Admiralty Court. 96 After the Revolution of 1688 the patents issued to colonial vice-admirals reserved an appeal from any definitive sentence or interlocutory decree to the High Court of Admiralty of England. 97 Was it possible in the face of these patents still to appeal to the King in Council? In 1695 tne question was put to the Advocate General and the High Court of Admiralty judge as to what body an appeal would lie to from a Barbados Vice-Admiralty Court judgment. These officials were of the opinion that the appeal lay to the King in Council, 95 CSP, Col., 1685-88, #1280. However, it should be noted that the High Court of Admiralty had exercised appellate jurisdiction over the English vice-admiralty courts at an earlier period; see 2 Select Pleas in the Court of Admiralty (Selden Soc. Pub., ed. R. G. Marsden, 1897), 200-201, Ixv, lxxii. See also 2 Browne, Compendious View of the Civil Law and of the Law of the Admiralty (1802), 490-91, who seemingly bases this appellate jurisdiction on 8 Eliz., c. 5, which is not apposite. It was also contemporaneously held that appeals lay from all sentences, interlocutory decrees and grievances of any vice-admirals to the High Court of Admiralty (Clerke, Praxis curiae admiralitatis Anglice [1722], 53). See also the vice-admiral patent reserving a right of appeal to the High Court of Admiralty in Baker, The Office of Vice-Admiral of the Coast (1884), 50. This eighteenthcentury patent is said scarcely to vary from the older patents (ibid). At this period appeals also lay from the Irish vice-admiralty courts to the High Court of Admiralty of England (Crump, op. cit., 103-4, 161; 2 Wynne, Life of Sir Leoline fenkins [1774], 788; Petty- Southwell Corres., 1676-87 [1928], 66). Crump states that the ambiguity as to the appellate jurisdiction over the colonial viceadmiralty courts was caused by the separation of the Irish and colonial establishments from the English by the Test Act of 1673 (Crump, op. cit., 103), but this explanation fails to account for the fact that Irish vice-admiralty appeals were still carried to the High Court of Admiralty in England (ibid., 161). 96 A ship seized, condemned, and purchased by Captain St. Loe in the Antigua Vice- Admiralty Court arrived in England and was arrested there at the owner Kirwan's suit; possession was decreed the owner by the High Court of Admiralty. These proceedings altering possession as decreed in Antigua were considered highly irregular by the Lords Committee; possession was therefore ordered restored to St. Loe, and an appeal to the Council Board allowed Kirwan (Kirwan v. St Loe PC 2/72/468). 97 The change from the Stuart formula mentioned in the text supra, p. 90, reflects the alteration in royal prerogative resulting from the Revolution. Furthermore, the Admiralty was in commission until 1702, when Prince George of Denmark was made Lord High Admiral (cf. 2 Wm. & Mary, Sess. 2, c. 2, An Act Concerning Commissioners of the Admiralty). Sir William Phips' Vice-Admiralty commission of Dec. 29, 1691, is the earliest example of the clause we have seen (2 Pub. Col. Soc. Mass., 206). It appears in Bellomont's 1698 commission (ibid., 216) and is in the subsequent commissions for Massachusetts Bay. See also Cornbury's commission (1700) in 1 Benedict, American Admiralty (sth ed., 1925), 791; Hunter's commission (1715) in 5 Doc. Rel. Col. Hist. N.Y., 424. This saving clause is apparently standard and is also inserted in governors' commissions to vice-admiralty judges; cf. the Morris (N.Y.) commissions of 1738 and 1762 (1 Benedict, op. cit., 810, 816); and that to James Michie (So. Car.) of 1753 (Jameson, Privateering and Piracy [1923], 5i9).