the King in Council. Under this instruction appellate recourse might be rendered futile by the interim insolvency of respondent or his withdrawal from the jurisdiction with his assets. However, this blanket rule might be tempered in individual cases. In one 1699 case in which execution had issued appellant petitioned the Council that respondent post security to answer the appellate determination. Several precedents in the plantations being found, the Barbados governor was directed to take such security, if it could be legally required. 72 By 1715 matters had come to such a pass that the Board of Trade sought the opinion of Attorney General Northey whether respondent should be obliged to give security to be answerable for the res in case of appellate reversal. 73 No opinion is to be found on this query. But in several colonies the instructions were altered between 1718 and 1721 to restrict the prohibitive clause to any cause where the judgment of an inferior court was confirmed by the Governor and Council. 74 It still appeared, however, that great inconveniences arose because of immediate issuance of execution while an appeal was pending in cases where respondent had become insolvent or had withdrawn himself or his effects from the province before the reversing conciliar determination had become known, thereby rendering it nugatory. 75 To correct this situation 72 CSP, Col., 1699, #356, 448, 544, 560-61. 73 The Board of Trade stated that it might happen that respondent, having come into possession by virtue of the judgment of the Governor and Council, might prove insolvent, run away, or embezzle the proceeds of the execution. Appellant would thus be without remedy in case the King in Council reversed the sentence below (CSP, Col., 1714-15, #493; ]CTP, 1714/5-18, 48-49)- 74 In Jamaica the change occurred in 1718; in New Jersey and New York in 1720; in Barbados and the Leeward Islands in 1721 (1 Labaree, Royal Instructions, #449). The Board of Trade explained this addition "as being desirous to follow the original design of the instructions so far forth as the same may be agreable to the practice in the courts of judicature in England, where every appeal to a superior court stops the execution from the inferior, reserving out of that general rule such cases only as carry in the very face of them an appearance of being vexatious" (CSP, Col., 1717-18, #144; ibid., 1720-21, #654). 75 See the actions of one Thomas Bordley in some prolonged Maryland litigation which was before the Privy Council on several occasions (Proc. Md. Ct. Appeals, 1695-1729, xli et seq.). An act covering this situation had already been passed in Barbados, viz., An Act appointing security to be given by Appellees, May 10, 1720 (Laws of Barbados [1855], 24). Reciting the evil aimed at, the act declared that when any appeal was taken to the King in Council from any judgment or decree in the island, execution should be stayed until final determination of the appeal, unless respondent gave bond with sufficient securities in double the value of the judgment or decree to make restitution in case of appellate reversal. This statute was brought to the Council's attention by a dispute between one William Gordon and ex-Governor Lowther of Barbados. For the course of the dispute see 2 APC, Col., #1310. To render appellate relief more difficult of achievement in a £10,000 defamation action commenced by Gordon in the Court of Common Pleas against Lowther's attorney, Gordon and his faction secured the repeal of the above act and also of an act obliging judges to direct juries to bring in special verdicts at the instance of either party to a suit in order to enable them to lay their case fully before the King in Council on appeal. Lowther, alleging severe injury to his estate if execution should issue and doubt as to the ability of Gordon to refund the money