sentences application had to be made to the High Court of Admiralty in England 
288 In 1721 Jeremiah Dummer declared that from vice-admiralty court 
sentences "the appeal does not lie to the King and Council as it does from 
other courts, but to the judge of the Admiralty." 2 " 
The lack of clear jurisdictional concepts is illustrated from other sources. In 
one case an appeal from a vice-admiralty court sentence was erroneously 
entered as taken to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, a nonjudicial 
body. 300 In some quarters the High Court of Delegates was regarded as the 
proper appellate body although according to the normal course of proceeding 
this body exercised an appellate function as to sentences in the High Court of 
Admiralty. 301 It was possible and sometimes happened that appeals from 
colonial vice-admiralty courts, taken to the High Court of Admiralty, might 
be carried further on appeal to the High Court of Delegates, a circumstance 
which may have given rise to the belief that colonial appeals might lie directly 
to the latter. 302 An appeal in a seizure under the Navigation Acts might also 
be mistakenly made to the Lords Commissioners for Prize Appeals. 303 The 
latter confusion was abetted by the language of the 1707 Act for the Encouragement 
of the Trade to Amerka? oi In 1723 two appeals from Rhode Island 
298 2 Chalmers, Opinions, 210. 
299 Defense of the New England Charters 
(c. 1765), 62. 
300 Cranston v. Jekyll (PC 2/88/617; 1724). 
According to the Privy Council register, 
Cranston, Governor of Rhode Island, petitioned 
the King in Council for leave to appeal from 
a Boston Vice-Admiralty Court sentence, notwithstanding 
leave granted to appeal to said 
Lords Commissioners. But it appears from a 
copy of the petition in the Lee MSS (National 
Maritime Museum, Greenwich) that the appeal 
had been made to the High Court of 
Admiralty. Since it was contended that the 
Vice-Admiralty Court had no jurisdiction under 
13 and 14 Charles 11, c. 11, and 15 Charles 
11, c. 7, and that the sentences were thus null 
and void ab initio, it was thought more proper 
to appeal to the King in Council. The Order in 
Council of Sept. 16, 1701, in the case of In re 
America was relied on as precedent (see supra, 
p. 182). The Committee to which the petition 
was referred ordered that inquiry be made of 
the several places to which the Court of Admiralty 
sent Admiralty commissions and that 
a copy of the Massachusetts charter be laid 
before the Committee (PC 2/88/19). Upon 
consideration of the petition and hearing 
counsel on both sides the Committee advised 
allowance of the appeal (PC 2/89/92). 
301 See In re Katherine and Elizabeth, CO 
5/1047/594; 1 Douglass, Summary, Historical 
and Political (1755), 483; 2 Talcott Papers, 
5 Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., 496. Cf. Washburn, 
Sketches of the Early Judicial History of Massachusetts, 
173; Noble, A Few Notes on Admiralty 
Jurisdiction in . . . Massachusetts Bay, 
8 Pub. Col. Soc. Mass., 158. 
302 Cf. infra, n. 317; Summers v. Elphinstone 
(1771 from Newfoundland), Burrell 108. 
303 Israel v. Innes (Donaldson), Case of Respondent 
(Add. MS, 36219/219); Furlong v. 
Smith (PC 2/111/687, 695, 705). Cf. the conciliar 
Cases in Guignand v. Knowler and 
McNelly v. Knowler where the Committee for 
Hearing Appeals is termed the Lords Commissioners 
of Appeals from the Plantations 
(Add. MS, 36220/95, 99). 
304 In the 1727 prize cause of Norris v. Four 
Casks, etc., of Snuff in the New York Vice- 
Admiralty Court, the reclaimants prayed leave 
to appeal from the sentence to the King in his 
Privy Council, which was granted (Report of 
Cases Vice Admiralty Province of N.Y. [ed. 
C. M. Hough, 1925], 9). In 1735 Norris, in 
a petition to the King in Council, prayed for 
dismissal of the appeal taken from the September 
4, 1727, sentence (PC 2/93/150). The 
appellants Medina et al. replied that before 
1708 appeals from vice-admiralty courts in