properly lye before Your Majesty in Council." 417 Whether these limitations 
were conceived to spring from 16 Charles I, c. 10, is not apparent. 
PUBLICISTS AND POLITICAL OPINION 
Our account of the establishment of the Council's appellate jurisdiction in 
the eighteenth century would not be complete without some reference to 
the eventual effect upon provincial opinion which the settlement of the bounds 
of this authority produced. It is true that in some quarters the appeal to the 
King in Council was an accepted part of the colonial constitution on the eve 
of the American Revolution, 418 yet for a decade prior to that event pamphlet 
and personal attacks on such jurisdiction were mounting. Thomas Pownall 
in his famous treatise on the administration of the colonies remarked upon 
the unsuitability of the Privy Council as a court of appeal. This appellate jurisdiction, 
derived from the Channel Islands precedent, was inapplicable to the 
modes of English law. Further, this jurisdiction was not generally exercised, 
some charter colonies being excluded, except in personal actions exceeding 
sterling. Besides the difficulty of the appeal and the inefficiency of the 
redress, the Privy Council, constitutionally excluded from judging between 
subject and subject in other cases, was only accidentally or particularly attended 
as an appellate body. 419 The writer then mentioned the suggestion of some 
able colonial lawyers—the establishment of a supreme court of appeal and 
equity for the continental colonies, with perhaps three circuits. This court, 
constituted by commission to one or two persons learned in the laws of England 
and of their respective circuits, would have full chancery powers and 
error jurisdiction in law. It would introduce legal conformity not only among 
the different colonies but also to the laws of England. 420 
Later in 1769 the same writer voiced the opinion that the nonextension of 
16 Charles I, c. 10, to the colonies created a constitutional issue, for he questioned 
whether it was 
not a serious matter, whether appeals are to lye from the judicatory of the Province 
[Massachusetts], in real actions, to the King in Council, whereby the lands, tenements, 
and hereditaments of British subjects may be questioned by the Lords of 
the Privy Council, contrary to the Petition of Rights, 16 Car. I, cap. 10? * 21 
But this protest must be regarded in the light of the struggle in Massachusetts 
to restrain appeals in real actions as contrary to the charter provisions. 422 
*" PC 2/98/240-46, 254. 
418 See James Tighman to Henry Wilmot, Oct. 
2, 1774 (11 MS Venn Official Corres., 
1772-75, 176). 
419 Pownall, Administration of the Colonies 
(1765), 82-83. 
i2a ibid., 83-84. 
421 Pownall to Rev. Dr. Cooper, Feb. 25, 
1769 and Oct. 9, 1769; in Griffin, Junius Discovered 
(1854), 214, 249-50. 
422 See supra, p. 162 et seq.