jury and that no such method of reviewing judgments of the General Court 
had been hitherto allowed or established. If the reports of merchants, not under 
oath and inclined to favor class interests, were allowed to overrule jury verdicts, 
it was contended subjects would be liable to great impositions from the 
trading classes. A future course of review was prayed in which subjects might 
enjoy the benefit of trial according to the laws and customs of England. 276 
From these causes it appears that in cases of contested accounts exception must 
be made to our previous generalization. As we shall see later in our discussion 
of rehearings, a further exception in the case of newly discovered evidence is 
intimated. 
THE COMMITTEE REPORT 
After this consideration of the scope of appellate review we again take up the 
Committee appellate routine. When counsel had been fully heard, both they 
and the parties were ordered to withdraw, and the Committee deliberated 
upon the appeal. 277 Usually the report was rendered on the same day as the 
hearing, but in some cases consideration was more prolonged. 278 In case the 
hearing was ex parte in default of an appearance by respondent, counsel for 
appellant were heard and the record sent up was examined. 279 In some cases 
the Committee or the members appear to have rendered decisions as well as to 
have made the usual bare reports, 280 but such decisions did not avail the 
interest there was a balance due defendants. 
This judgment was reversed by the Privy 
Council when three of the four London merchants 
who acted as commissioners reported 
that the items of interest and insurance were 
fair and agreeable to constant usage of merchants 
trading in the plantations (CSP, Col., 
7726-27, #216 i). In the colony in actions 
at common law no plaintiff had any other 
allowance of interest, but such as a jury 
thought fit to assess in damages. 
276 Ibid. 
277 1 Correspondence of Colonial Governors of 
Rhode Island, 293. 
278 See Bunyard v. Losack (PC 2/99/380); 
Woodley v. Gordon (PC 2/96/311). See 
infra, p. 442, for the long gestation of the final 
report in Mohegan Indians v. Connecticut. 
279 See Olyphant v. Manning (PC 2/103/ 
370-75); Stone v. Chapman (PC 2/104/ 
295-96). 
280 Most numerous of those preserved are 
Lord Mansfield's; see WO 1/404/42-59; Add. 
MS, 36,218/202-4; Add. MS, 36,219/199- 
200; Burn v. Cole (1 Ambler 415); 3 Proc. 
N.H. Hist. Soc, 285-86. In Wells v. Wilson, 
a St. Christopher appeal from a sentence of 
die Ordinary, the following is endorsed upon 
a copy of the Case of the Appellant in the 
Library of Congress (Law Div.): "The Lords 
held that the Statute of Frauds does not prevent 
receiving parol evidence concerning an 
unexecuted will, to show the intention of a 
testator that such paper should not operate 
as his will, for in that case the parol evidence 
is not to revoke a will which was certainly 
once valid, as in the case of an executed will 
but to determine whether the unexecuted 
paper was considered by the testator as his 
will or not. They likewise held that the birth 
of a child subsequent to making of a will, 
is not alone sufficient to revoke a will that 
would otherwise be valid, but when it was 
doubtful whether a paper was a will or not, 
the birth of a child left unprovided for, is a 
very strong circumstance to induce a court 
to believe the testator could not intend such 
paper should operate as his will. In the present