vided that all deeds and conveyances of houses and lands within the colony, 
signed and sealed by the grantor, acknowledged before any Assistant or Justice 
of the Peace, and recorded in the registry of the town where such premises lay 
within the space of six months from the date of conveyance, should be valid 
without any further act or ceremony. No bargain, sale, mortgage or other 
conveyance should be good to hold the lands against any person other than 
the grantor or his heir unless the deeds were so acknowledged and recorded 
186 The careless draftsmen of the act made no provision for the case 
in which two conveyances were made of the same property, but the deeds were 
registered in the reverse order of their granting. 
One David Thayer, in January, 1763, being indebted to Robert and Ellis 
Lewis, merchants of Philadelphia, in the sum of ,£7OO (Philadelphia money), 
as security for payment executed a deed poll by which he conveyed the fee 
of a certain Rhode Island farm to his creditors, with the proviso that if the 
amount due was paid within a year the deed was to be delivered up, or if 
recorded, the Lewises were to reconvey. The latter failed to record this crude 
mortgage until May 31, 1763. In the meantime, Thayer, in April of that year, 
by a bargain and sale deed conveyed the same premises in fee simple to 
Benjamin Wilkinson of Gloucester, R.I. This instrument was recorded on 
April 26, 1763, and Wilkinson entered upon possession. 
The Lewises brought an action of trespass and ejectment against Wilkinson 
in the Providence Court of Common Pleas in May, 1764. After the cause was 
brought to issue, defendant examined witnesses ex parte without notice to 
plaintiff, and on this alone the issue was committed to a jury, which returned 
a verdict for defendant. Plaintiffs took an appeal to the Superior Court (September, 
1764), where witnesses for both sides were examined and where the 
jury reversed the earlier verdict. Wilkinson then sued out a writ of review returnable 
at the March, 1765, term of the same Superior Court. Further evidence 
was there presented, and the jury to which the issue was committed reversed 
the earlier Superior Court judgment and found for the original defendant 
Wilkinson. 
The Lewises appealed to the King in Council, and as usual in a Rhode Island 
case, a precis of the evidence went up. Apart from argument as to whether 
appellants were chargeable with fraud (since there was some proof to indicate 
their agent was aware of negotiations with Wilkinson and hoped thereby to 
collect the debt owing), it was claimed on the one hand that the Rhode Island 
act did not require instantaneous recording of deeds and that the deed of 
January, 1763, since it had in fact been recorded, gave a good title. 187 On the 
186 Acts and haws R.I. (1745), 50. 
187 Case of Appellant, Add. MS, 36,220/127- 
30-