Board of Trade, upon this complaint, represented that under the 1699 and 1704 acts an appeal was allowed from the Provincial Court to the Chancery Court and from thence to the Governor and Council and that this intermedi- ate appeal to the Chancery Court, not allowed in other plantations, made it inconvenient that the governor should have custody of the province seal. Further, the minimum limitations upon appeals to the King in Council were an impairment of the royal prerogative which might be injurious to the subject. Although it might be fitting to restrain the governor from admitting appeals below the instructional minimum, yet as the King was the fountain of justice the power of receiving subminimum appeals should be reserved to him. Therefore, disallowance of both acts was advised. With these acts repealed, the appellate system would subsist by the royal instructions, as in other plantations 215 The acts were accordingly disallowed on June 14, 1711. 216 The province was not content, however, to operate under the governor's instructions alone. After some legislative wrangling as to content, 217 an act for regulating writs of error and granting appeals from and to the courts of common law in the province passed late in 1712. This act omitted all reference to chancery appeals, but re-enacted the previous provisions as to common law appeals. 218 Upon receipt of this act the Board of Trade informed Edward Lloyd, president of the Maryland Council, that the clause relating to appeals from the Governor and Council to the Queen in Council should have been omitted, the matter being sufficiently provided for by the instructions. Lloyd was advised to endeavor to have a new law passed under threat of disallowance 219 In November, 1713, this communication was laid before the provincial legislature, with recommendations to re-enact the existing law, omitting the clause directing appeals to the Queen in Council. 220 Upon this recommendation an act was passed which repealed the 1712 act and omitted all reference to appeals to the Queen in Council. The same minimum for appeal from the Provincial Court to the Governor and Council was maintained. 221 Following restoration 215 CO 5/727/251-55. This appellate hierarchy appears to be a misinterpretation of the clause that any person entitled to relief in equity from a Provincial Court or county court judgment should exhibit his bill in chancery before entrance of an appeal before the Governor and Council; see 22 Md. Archives, 469; 26 ibid., 286. 21® CSP, Col., 1710-11, #881. 217 On November 4 conferees of both legislative houses agreed on the necessity of an act agreeable to the former law excluding the provision relating to appeals from Chancery to the Governor and Council. A clause was also to be added restraining appeals from Chancery to the Queen in Council unless amounting to £300 sterling or 60,000 pounds tobacco (29 Md. Archives, 92). The council opposed the added provision as unnecessary under the instructions {ibid., 94), while the lower house approved the addition (ibid., 145-46). But the latter body capitulated to the view of the upper house (ibid., 151). See also CSP, Col., 1712-14, #145- 218 38 Md. Archives, 150. 219 CSP, Col., 1712-14, #395- 220 29 Md. Archives, 234-35, 3°B. 221 Ibid., 336.