after another act of the same nature had been repealed by the late Queen. 149 
Thirdly, the act was not consonant to reason, but repugnant and contrary to 
the laws, statutes, and rights of the Kingdom. 150 
The Lieutenant-Governor and Council, convinced of the notoriety of the 
crime and the justness of the conviction, yet admitting a right of appeal when 
well-founded and offered according to the form and direction of the law, declared 
it absurd that a condemned person could use such right without regard 
to circumstances to extort a reprieve against the execution of a just sentence. 
Therefore, the petitions being improperly offered as to time and place, it was 
thought by no means expedient or prudent to interrupt execution of the sentence 
imposed. 151 However, the attempted appeal served to stimulate legislation 
to settle the question of the validity under English law of a trial by jurors 
who had taken an affirmation rather than an oath. 152 Later, in 1736, we find 
the Supreme Court granting appeals to two Marylanders, Rumsey and Carroll, 
from respective fines of and _£io imposed as the result of the boundary 
dispute with Maryland. Because of the harsh conditions of security, the appeals 
were never prosecuted. 153 
ACTS OF PARLIAMENT AND CONTINENTAL COLONIAL ACTS 
Having now considered at length the scope of appeal regulation by royal instruction, 
it is desirable at this point to enter a caveat against overemphasizing 
their direct effect in the plantations at large. In the first place, instructions were 
usually sent only to royal colonies. Secondly, other regulatory methods were 
utilized in various colonies, including the extension of acts of Parliament governing 
the English appellate process to conciliar appeals. 154 This last manner 
of regulation was apparently a peculiarity of Jamaica practice, for there, upon 
provided (Section 6) that no Quaker or reputed 
Quaker should by virtue of the act 
be qualified or permitted to give evidence in 
any criminal causes or serve on any juries. 
149 For the act permitting qualification see 3 
Stat, at Large Pa., 39; the repealed act referred 
to was presumably A Supplementary Act 
to a Law about the Manner of Giving Evidence 
(2 ibid., 425) disallowed by the Queen 
in Council in February, 1713/4 {ibid., 543). 
150 3 Hins. Prov. Coun. Pa., 41. 
151 Ibid., 41-42. One Council member suggested 
that it would be prudent to grant a 
reprieve solely out of regard for the security 
of the government, but was overruled. For 
discussion of the friction generated between 
imperial and colonial authorities by use of the 
affirmation see Root, The Relations of Pennsylvania 
with the British Government, i6g6— 
1765 (1912), 234 et seq. 
152 See Fitzroy, Punishment of Crime in Provincial 
Pennsylvania, 60 Pa. Mag. of Hist, and 
Biog., 250. For the resultant statute see 3 
Stat, at Large Pa., 199. 
153 Daniel Dulany to Lord Baltimore, Oct. 29, 
1736 (Dulany MSS., Box 2, #4). Cf. the July, 
!737> petition of Rumsey and William Cannon 
to the Council Board that they be discharged 
from indictments in the Supreme Court of 
Pennsylvania or that they be tried and allowed 
to appeal (3 APC, Col. p. 339). 
154 We have seen no evidence of the 1746 
statute mentioned by Kellogg (The American 
Colonial Charter, 1 Annual Rep. Amer. Hist. 
Assn. [1903], 268, note) as defining appeals.