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Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period

Note 1 — THE REVENGE. (continued 2)

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Massachusetts Historical Society. It will be observed that an appeal was an expensive process; that advocates' fees were expressed in guineas, multiples of £1. 1s.; that the proctor felt that he had to have a coach whenever he went to attend one of the sessions of the court; and that "the law's delays" were abundantly exemplified. The Lords Commissioners sat in the Council Chamber at the Cockpit in Whitehall. Their procedure can be gathered from the printed briefs, for appellant and respondent, which are preserved in a few American libraries, often bearing manuscript annotations by the lawyers for whom they were prepared. The Library of Congress has a collection of such briefs, some 200 in number, 1751-1764, bound in four huge folio volumes, and still ampler collections for the later wars of the century, American and French. The library of Brown University has two such volumes, embracing briefs in forty or fifty cases, 1780-1782. Another collection, also bound in two volumes, formerly belonging to Mr. Gordon L. Ford, but now to the New York Public Library, is described by the late Paul L. Ford in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XXV. 85-101, with full data respecting the twenty-five American cases.

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