until resident therein three years, under penalty. 41 Surveyor General 
Keith suspended one George Luke as collector of the lower district of the James 
River and granted a deputation to Francis Kennedy to officiate in that district. 
Whereupon an information was exhibited against Kennedy in the Virginia 
courts for the penalty. The Attorney General was of the opinion that 
the 1696 act of Parliament having given the Commissioners of the Customs 
appointive powers in the plantations, the Virginia act was void under section 
nine as repugnant to another section of the 1696 act; further, that the colonial 
act not having been approved might be repealed. If judgment were given on 
the forfeiture, satisfaction might be acknowledged by the crown or the judgment 
reversed by writ of error. 42 The Board of Trade then represented that 
the provincial act being repugnant to the Act for Preventing Frauds the 
crown should signify disallowance and disapprobation of the law. 43 Disallowance 
accordingly followed on August 31V1715. 44 This action is a far cry 
from that taken on the early Pennsylvania act. 
Several other instances are available where the Council declined to declare 
acts within the purview of section nine null and void ab initio in favor of 
mere disallowance. In 1719 the Commissioners of the Customs reported a 
Jamaica Act for ascertaining the number of ports of entry as contrary to the 
Acts of Navigation. 45 The Board of Trade thereupon offered to the King that 
he declare his disapprobation of the act as repugnant to the Acts of Trade and 
Navigation and "consequently in its own nature illegal, null and void." 48 
Despite this recommendation, however, the act was merely disallowed on May 
26, 1719. 47 In this same year the Board of Trade reported upon a Massachusetts 
act which bore the deceptive title "For granting his Majesty several Rates 
and Duties of Impost & Tunnage of Shipping made at Massachusetts Bay." 
The Board of Trade proposed, since the act was of so extraordinary a nature, 
that the King declare his disapprobation thereof "as being repugnant to the 
laws of this Kingdom by which the plantations are and ought to be bound 
and consequently illegal, null, and void to all intents and purposes whatsoever." 
48 But the language of the disallowance was in the usual form. 49 
41 3 Hening, Stat, at Large Va., 250. 
i2 CSP, Col., 1714-15, #483. 
i3 lbid., #504. 
44 Ibid., #591; PC 2/85/274. 
45 CSP, Col., 1719-20, #138. 
i& lbid., #148. 
"PC 2/86/261; CSP, Col., 1719-20, #198. 
48 2 Acts and Res. Prov. Mass. Bay, 127-28. 
Provisions of the act ran contrary to the Navigation 
Acts, discriminated against English shipping, 
and placed hardships upon English ship 
owners. For the act, see ibid., 107. Jeremiah 
Dummer wrote that it was owing to the ill 
services of Lieutenant-Governor Usher of New 
Hampshire and Colonel Byfield that the Board 
of Trade made this sharp report. "I have reason 
to say what I do, because the Commissioners 
of Trade were told by somebody (I 
can't certainly say who, but its easy to guess) 
that the Assembly of New Hampshire not long 
since came to a resolution to lay a tax tole and 
impost on all European goods, from whence 
it was inferred that if some check were not 
given to this licentiousness, the plantations