to private franchises identical rules respecting by-laws made at a court leet. 
In the case of the royal colonies, where the manner of government depended 
upon the commission to the governor, the effect of the clause requiring laws 
to be agreeable to those of England is obscure. Pownall 9 asserts that the constitution 
in these colonies rested upon the commission and instructions, a 
suggestion followed by Blackstone 10 and later by Mansfield in Campbell v. 
Hall. 11 This notion is already implicit in a 1721 report to the Council 12 respecting 
the various continental colonies, but the word "constitution" is there 
used probably only in the sense of governmental structure, not as Pownall 
employed it in the broader philosophical sense of something upon which 
political rights depended. If the governor's commission is to be treated simply 
as any other type of English commission, the restriction laid down in the 
early seventeenth century 13 that commissions had to be exercised pursuant 
to English law was applicable, and the basis for treating as void laws passed 
in despite of the limitation existed in the common law. 
It is not to be assumed that the matter just discussed was long out-moded 
black-letter learning, of no concern to the gentlemen at Whitehall. The moves 
by Charles II and his advisers against the chartered boroughs and in particular 
the assault on the City of London (1681-83) infused the ancient precedents 
with fresh vitality and served to make the matter of by-law power and its 
exercise an issue which excited the greatest public attention. 14 This interest 
did not abate until some time after the Revolution of 1688 and contributed to 
the general sentiment that curbs against "illegal" exercise of authority had 
to be found. The measures taken by statute to control colonial legislation may 
be viewed as a part of this reaction. 
The basic statutory regulation, and the source of administrative declarations 
of nullity, was the ninth section of the so-called Act for Preventing 
Frauds, and Regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade (7 and 8 Wm. 111, 
c. 22 [1696]). It was there enacted "that all laws, by-laws, usages or customs, at 
this time, or which hereafter shall be in practice, or endeavoured or pretended 
to be in force or practice, in any of the said plantations, which are in any 
wise repugnant to the before mentioned laws, or any of them, so far as they 
do relate to the said plantations, or any of them, or which are any ways repugnant 
to this present act, or to any other law hereafter to be made in this 
Kingdom, so far as such law shall relate to and mention the said plantations, 
are illegal, null and void, to all intents and purposes whatsoever." 
9 The Administration of the Colonies (2d ed., 
1765), 54-55- 
use of "constitution" in a January 23, 1733/4, 
representation of the Board of Trade to the 
House of Lords {Add. MS, 35,907/51). 
13 12 Co\e Rep. 19, 50. 
10 1 Commentaries, 108. 
11 20 Howell, State Trials, 300. 
12 5 Doc. Rel. Col. Hist. N.Y., 591 et seq. See 
particularly ibid., 595, 606, 627. See also the 
14 Cf. 8 Howell, State Trials, 1039 et seq.