dispatched to a number of colonies. These instructions for the most part only 
codified the existing appellate regulations, 23 yet an additional restriction was 
promulgated that in appeals to the Governor and Council such of the council 
as were judges of the court from which the appeal was made should not be 
permitted to vote upon such appeal, but might, nevertheless, be present at the 
hearing to give reasons for their judgment below. 24 A danger, apparently not 
foreseen, but inherent in strict adherence to this instruction, was inability to 
secure a quorum upon appeal. 25 The Board of Trade by analogy extended this 
instruction to the case in which a governor was an interested party. 26 
A few years later it was proposed from Barbados that appeals to the King 
in Council should be granted for sums over if applied for within sixty 
days. 27 But administrative silence greeted the proposal. In a 1714/5 memorial, 
probably originating with Barbados interests, the minimum was assumed 
as of general force in the plantations and was severely criticized as preventing 
appellate review in England in most litigation. It was further alleged that governors 
frequently refused appeals in cases satisfying the minimum requirements 
upon false pretense that the subject matter failed to meet such requirements. 
Necessity for preliminary recourse to England to secure leave to appeal 
in the latter cases made conciliar appeal a litigious luxury. 28 Castigated was 
the "interest" made by the Board of Trade to quash the earlier Committee 
recommendations for alteration of the Barbados instructions. 29 
A 1730 observer of the South Carolina judicial system criticized as too high 
23 The instructions were sent to Barbados, 
Bermuda, the Leeward Islands, Maryland, New 
Jersey, New York, and Virginia. 1 Labaree, 
Royal Instructions, #448-49. The form followed 
was that of the Jamaica instructions of 
1692. The greatest variation was in the minimal 
amounts necessary to an appeal. In appeals 
to the Governor and Council no minimum 
was set for Maryland and Virginia, 
/50 for Bermuda, X lOO f° r New Jersey, and 
for the other colonies (ibid., #448). 
In appeals to the King in Council was 
fixed as a minimum for Bermuda, £200 for 
New Jersey, ,£3OO for Maryland, New York, 
and Virginia, and ,£5OO for Barbados and 
the Leeward Islands (ibid., #449). The basis 
for imposing a ,£2OO minimum for New 
Jersey, rather than £300, may be a proposal 
contained in an August, 1701, memorial of 
the proprietors of the two New Jersey provinces 
whereby it was proposed "that no appeal 
to the King may lie in personal actions, 
where the cause of action is of less value than 
two hundred pounds" (Smith, History oj the 
Colony of Nova-Caesaria, or New Jersey 
[1865], 572). Cj. the earlier reservation of 
appeals in an answer to proposals of the East 
New Jersey proprietors (CSP, Col., 1699, 
#1006). 
24 1 Labaree, Royal Instructions, #448. This 
provision had been inserted in the Jamaica 
instructions since 1692. Although the force 
of this instruction in Maryland terminated in 
1715, the practice embodied therein continued. 
See 2 Correspondence Governor Horatio 
Sharpe, 9 Md. Archives, 433. 
25 See CSP, Col., 1711-12, #249; ibid., 
1728-29, #457; 3 Journals Assembly Jamaica, 
518-21. 
26 CSP, Col., 1712-14, #412. 
27 Ibid., 1706-8, #682. 
28 2 Col. Rec. No. Car., 161. The £500 appealable 
minimum complained of was alleged 
to have been established by 1689 instructions. 
This is probably an erroneous generalization 
drawn from the Barbados and Leeward Islands 
instructions of that year. See 1 Labaree, Royal 
Instructions, #445. Schlesinger in 28 Political 
Science Quarterly, 281, accepts as true this allegation 
as to general 1689 instructions. 
29 2 Col. Rec. No. Car., 165.