The reverse of the Hamiltonian doubts was reflected in an opinion of Attorney 
General Northey that no appeals to the King in Council under similar 
Barbados instructions were to be allowed from any court but the Court of 
Chancery. 111 This opinion may be explained by a confusion in terminology, 
since the Barbados Governor and Council acted both as a Court of Errors and 
a Court of Chancery. Governor Hamilton reverted to this problem of interpretation 
at a later date, asking for information as to whether chancery appeals 
should suspend further proceedings. 112 The Board of Trade advised that the 
instructions as to nonsuspension of execution upon appeal, being general in 
nature, included chancery appeals. 113 However, in practice appeals from the 
West Indian chancery courts were regularly admitted, even though the instructional 
ambiguity was never clarified. 
On the mainland the question whether the gubernatorial instructions included 
chancery appeals arose two decades later in the New Jersey chancery 
cause of Van Courtlandt and Stoutenburgh v. Thomase et al. A provincial 
decree had been obtained in this cause in July, 1732, 114 but defendants were 
not returned attached for their contempts of a writ of execution until May, 
1740. 115 Upon this return the defendants tendered Chancellor Morris an ap- 
1713, the Board of Trade declared that the 
Governor had acted correctly in permitting 
appeals from chancery decrees, since they exceeded 
the value of jCsoo, "y° ur Instruction 
being general to allow all above that sum" 
(ibid., #413). See also ibid., 1716-17, #123. 
111 The view was elicited indirectly in answer 
to a query from Governor Lowther of Barbados 
whether appeals lay from the Court of Exchequer, 
a court of both law and equity, to the 
Court of Chancery, consisting of the Governor 
and Council (ibid., 1711-12, #228). Northey 
declared that the governor, by virtue of his instructions, 
was to admit appeals as well from 
the Court of Exchequer as from other courts 
in Barbados to the Governor and Council. This 
was plainly the intent of the instructions, no 
appeal being directed to be allowed from any 
court to the King, but from the Court of 
Chancery. An appeal from the Exchequer to 
the King would have been provided for if appeal 
had not been intended first to the Chancery 
(ibid., 1712-14, #397). In 1717 Edward 
Sutton filed an English bill in the equity side 
of the Barbados Exchequer Court against Andrew 
Cassally, praying condemnation under 
two colony acts of the sloop St. Luce with 
cargo. The Exchequer Court declared the ship 
and cargo forfeit on August 31, 1717, and 
Governor Lowther granted a writ of error to 
the Governor and Council {Barbados MSS, 
1731-78 [Harvard Law Lib.]). Further appeal 
was made to the King in Council (PC 2/86/ 
131, 167, 171). But this Governor and Council 
jurisdiction was apparently seldom exercised, 
for the above cited Barbados MS is a March 
22, 1735/6, certificate used to prove that such 
an appeal lay. 
112 In August, 1715, the governor wrote that 
whereas his instructions that appeals were not 
to suspend execution were calculated only for 
courts of law, it had been recently urged that 
the allowance of chancery appeals without particular 
instructions thereon should suspend 
further proceedings as in cases at law, in the 
absence of special instructions to the contrary. 
But by a parity of reasoning Hamilton was of 
a different opinion; he even thought that there 
were stronger reasons against halting proceedings 
in equity appeals than in appeals at law, 
delays in the former being more fatal than in 
the latter. He also thought it unreasonable to 
encourage one class of appeals more than the 
other (CSP, Col, 1714-15, #88). 
113 Ibid., 1716—17, #123. 
114 See A Brief State of the Case in fames 
Alexander MSS, Box 37. 
115 For the petition to Lewis Morris to seal the 
attachment see ibid.