The petition regards a presumed debt of John Lear, a member of the Virginia Council, who by a rule of the General Court was immune from suit. The petition is of interest, though not an actual appeal from a court judgment. According to Kammen, “Virginia at the Close of the Seventeenth Century,” p.143–144, the “very first piece of business referred to the Board [of Trade] in 1696, before it had held its first meeting, concerned Virginia. . . . The lords commissioners were ordered to report on the case of William Bowtell and Thomas Wenborne, merchants, who raised the issue of privileges enjoyed by councilors in Virginia. . . . In consequence, at their seventh meeting, on July 13, 1696, the Board heard the petition of the two aggrieved parties.”