should be made against any of the evidence, such objections, together with the resolutions of the court upon the same, were likewise to be taken down in writing, and the whole made part of the record. Liberty was also to be given to either side to appeal from the judgment to be given upon such new trial, in case they conceived themselves aggrieved thereby. 20 The only ground on which we can explain the reluctance of the Committee to give a judgment on the merits was the failure to use a bill of exceptions to excluded evidence. The lack of any general policy governing judicial proceedings at Whitehall, intensified by the tendency to act as the particular last instance tribunal of a particular provincial jurisdiction, rather than as a general supervisory body, prevented any attempts to capitalize the opinion expressed in Wharton v. Northrup in appeals from common law provinces. For when next the Committee was presented with the question of an appeal where the verdict had been general, this time from Virginia, it took a conservative stand. In 1740 the petition and appeal in Perry v. Churchill from an April, 1739, judgment of the General Court of Virginia, was presented to the Council and as a matter of routine referred to the Committee. 21 When the Committee heard counsel in the appeal in 1743, it directed that a search be made in the Council books to see whether appeals from judgments on general verdicts where the evidence was not taken down in writing had been allowed. 22 Two years later the appeal was dismissed upon the advice of the Committee, since it appeared that the appeal was brought from a judgment founded on a general verdict and that the matters given in evidence on the trial below were not transmitted under the seal of the colony. 23 From these cases standing alone it might be concluded that no appeals would be entertained by the King in Council unless there had been a special verdict below or all the evidence was in writing. But there are cases in which the fact that an appeal was from a general verdict did not prevent reversal and directions for a new trial below. In January, 1741/2, naval officer Thomas Bontein at Kingston, Jamaica, seized the ships Dolphin and Mercury, with their cargoes of brandy from Guernsey destined for consumption by the royal forces. In February informations were filed in the Jamaica Supreme Court on the basis of 15 Charles 11, c. 7, and upon general verdicts in favor of the informer judgments of forfeiture were given. The judgments were affirmed upon writ of error to the Court of Errors, and appeals were then taken to the King in 20 The several errors alleged in the proceedings below were that the court refused to let the jury take out with them several material deeds appellant had offered to the court in support of title, that only part of another material deed had been given to the jury and that one John Green, a near relative of one of the defendants and challenged as such, was suffered by the court to be foreman of the jury on the review (PC 2/91/302, 305). 21 PC 2/95/663. 22 PC 2/97/384. ZS PC 2/99/256, 268.