Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/413

 11. REINSCH: COLONIAL COMMON LAW 399 the first legal and equitable relief was administered by the same courts in Pennsylvania. By the laws of 1683, Chap. 71, an informal body of arbitrators, called peace-makers, was instituted. The appellate court was called the provincial court, but the council also had appellate jurisdiction; and in connection with this it had a jurisdiction, like that of the permanent council of the mediaeval English kings and of the Star Chamber, to punish maladministration and malfeasance on the part of powerful officials. ^ As the English Parliament of the time of Edward III, so the Pennsylvania assembly petitioned against this extraordinary jurisdiction. In 1701, it requested that " no person shall be liable to answer any complaint whatsoever relating to property before the gov- ernor or his council or in any other place but the ordinary courts of justice." ^ Pennsylvania at this early period effected the union of equity and law in jurisdiction and in practice, a method that has always characterized the jurisprudence of that state. The voluminous legislation in the case of Pennsylvania may be due to the fact that the charter granted by Charles II. declared that the laws of property and of crimes in the prov- ince should be the same as they were in the kingdom of Eng- land, until altered by the proprietor. The legislation of Pennsylvania covering virtually the whole field of property law may be called the first complete codification of law made in America. Penn himself was anxious to secure the services of trained lawyers. In a letter to Logan ^ he says that he has granted Roger Mompesson the commission of chief justice and he ad- vises the people to lay hold of such an opportunity as no government in America ever had of procuring the services of an English lawyer. Mompesson, however, did not remain in Pennsylvania long; he went to New York where he became chief justice, being appointed by Cornbury. The first lawyer who became chief justice of Pennsylvania was Guest, in 1701> ' Quoted in Fidd's Courts of New Jersey, 58.
 * Pennsylvania Colonial Records, I, 20, 79, 95, 96.
 * Ibid., "ll, 37.
 * Penn and Logan Correspondence, I, 19, 48.