The argument for appellant, as presented in the printed case, fell under many heads, not all pertinent to the issue on appeal. In the first place, appellants waived as grounds for reversal any mere informality or irregularity in the proceedings below, since Connecticut procedure was conceded to be less strict than that of England. 110 Although admittedly not in issue, argument was advanced to show that the Special County Courts before which several actions in the cause were tried were unauthorized by any statute then in force. 111 In the same vein it was conceived to be immaterial to enter into an extended examination of the two administration bond actions and the four partition actions, since the final determinations thereof favored appellant. But these actions were dwelt upon at length to show the extraordinary manner in which appellant had been proceeded against and the injustice of the subsequent assembly and Superior Court proceedings. 112 The chief point, therefore, to be considered was whether the subsequent proceedings of the assembly and Superior Court were agreeable to the charter and rules of law and justice or reconcilable with reason. 113 It was argued that under the statute law of the colony no appeal lay to the assembly from the Superior Court and, further, that such appeal could not lie, since the charter vested the assembly with no judicial power. The only appeal possible from the Superior Court was to the King in Council by inherent right of the crown. Secondly, Lechmere having admitted that under the laws of the province no relief could be obtained by common law or in the Court of Probates, the inter- Lord Privy Seal (Lord Trevor), the Earl of Findlater, the Earl of Marchmont, Lord Torrington, and Lord Chief Justices Raymond and Eyre. The meeting was confined to hearing this appeal. At the second day of hearing the same councilors attended with the exception of Marchmount and Torrington; see PC 2/90/195. Winthrop, writing to his wife in March, 1727/8, asserted that there were also present at the hearing the Lord Chancellor, Sir Robert Walpole, the Master of the Rolls, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, "and a full Councell Board; and a very numerous auditory of knights and gentlemen, who with one voice cryed, Shame on the New England Collony's" (6 Winthrop Papers, 510). 110 Ibid., 473. 111 The authority for holding the Special County Courts presumably derived from a clause in an Act for Holding of Courts and appointing the times and places for the same; see Acts and Laws of the Colony of Connecticut (1702), 22—24. If the basis of the courts were this act, it was claimed that such courts were limited to extraordinary occasions which could not be pretended here. But this act was alleged to have been repealed by an act o£ 10 Anne entitled An Act for establishing Superior Courts and altering the times of holding the County and Inferior Courts in the several Countys of this Colony (ibid., 473-76). For the further charge of arbitrary conduct of these special courts, see Article 20 of Winthrop's complaint (6 APC, Col, #367). 112 6 Winthrop Papers, 476. It was afterwards declared that the relation of the extraordinary steps taken against appellant in Connecticut very much assisted his case (2 Talcott Papas, 77)- 113 It was advanced that any possible objection to entering into the merits of the appeal on the ground that appeal should properly have been made to the assembly was overruled by the King allowing an appeal. Besides, the assembly was no court of judicature, judgments of the Superior Court were final, and all conciliar appeals had been from judgments of die Superior Court (6 Winthrop Papers, 494).