ably an aberration from the English use of the scire facias to revive judgments, 
after lapse of a year and a day. 408 But more extreme cases of refractory conduct 
are available. In August, 1754, one Henry Paget petitioned the General Assembly 
to supplicate the King in Council to reverse the March 28, 1754, Order 
in Council in Walter v. Paget or to afford petitioner such other relief as was 
meet. Petitioner alleged that one John Checkley, some years earlier, had purchased 
a Providence dwelling at a public sale by the sheriff of part of the 
estate of William Walker of Great Britain for the satisfaction of sundry debts 
owing the creditors who had attached the dwelling. Petitioner, after having 
made the purchase, had been sued by Walker on the pretense that the sale, 
made pursuant to a colony law, was invalid. The Superior Court of Judicature 
in a September, 1749, judgment had upheld the validity of the sale as a matter 
of law, reversing a December 15,1747, judgment of the Inferior Court of Common 
Pleas. Walker thereupon had appealed to the King in Council, where 
upon an ex parte hearing the judgment of the Superior Court of Judicature 
had been reversed. The petitioner alleged that the Order in Council would 
be a precedent to void all sales of the same sort in the colony, many estates 
standing upon the same footing as the property in issue. The General Assembly, 
upon consideration of the petition, resolved that execution of the conciliar 
order be stayed for one year so that petitioner might have opportunity 
to address the King for relief. 409 The agents of Walker professed surprise at 
this questioning of the finality of an Order in Council and inability to perceive 
how the Assembly could oppose a royal mandate. Therefore, the General Assembly 
was petitioned to discontinue the injunction, since the King in Council 
was the supreme judicial body for the plantations and exempt from control 
by Assembly prohibitions, injunctions, and suspensions. 410 Although the latter 
petition was unavailing, 411 we have seen no conciliar application for relief 
by Paget. 
Probably the most notable example of colonial judicial recalcitrance is found 
in the two Rhode Island appeals of Freebody v. Brenton et al. The issues involved 
being identical in both causes, discussion is limited for the sake of conciseness 
to one appeal. 412 On October 2, 1752, one Joseph Whipple mortgaged 
408 Under English precedents execution could 
be had without a scire facias within a year 
after an affirmance on writ of error, for the 
affirmance was considered a new judgment 
(Rolle Abr. 899). But in Freebody v. Cook 
(supra, n. 407) the Order in Council was presented 
to the Superior Court well within a 
year after issue. 
409 MS Petitions to the R.I. Gen. Assemb., 
1755-57, $6- F° r the conciliar proceedings, 
see PC 2/103/74, 78, no, 169, 188; PC 2/ 
104/28, 85, 101. 
410 MS Petitions to the R.I. Gen. Assemb., 
'755-57, #i» 18. 
411 Ibid. 
412 The statement of the case is taken from the 
printed "cases" of the appellants and respondents 
(Add. MS, 36,220/218-23; Col. Univ. 
Law Lib.) used in the 1769 hearing before the 
Committee and from the following Privy