Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 03.pdf/33

 14 he was (probably) the author of an act to remodel the courts, by which they were per mitted to sit in Equity. The pleadings were provided for specifically, and power given the courts to enforce their decrees by imprison ment. At about this time a case in the New Vice-Admiralty Court for Pennsylvania — in which the unpopular Colonel Quarry, Judge of that Court and suspected of being a spy, was brought into collision with Lloyd, — shows something of David Lloyd's character. Taking advantage of certain unperformed technicalities, the King's collector had seized a ship's cargo. Its owner, quickly complying with the technicalities, vainly petitioned Quarry for his now wrongfully detained goods. Quarry, the English-appointed judge, could afford to be deaf. Nor could Governor Markham therefore dare to be less so. It would never do to offend an officer of the king. The merchant as a last resort went to the law courts, and they gave him a writ of re plevin. This outraged the feelings of Quarry, whose powerful position and backing chilled that craving for impartial justice which the Governor and Council (officially) cher ished. But David Lloyd encouraged the merchant to assert his rights. The Quarry side paraded into the court, with the re splendent royal commission bearing the por trait of the King. This was their vindication. From the commission hung the Admiralty seal, inside a tin case. Said Lloyd, who was the plaintiff, " What 's this? Do you think to scare us with a great box and a little Babie? " But Quarry with his King was too much for Justice, and the merchant lost his case. J^or would Penn, fearing to tempt Providence, allow Lloyd to carry the case to England for an appeal. A little later he became vigorously hostile to Penn; and after he was Chief-Justice, we find Penn's widow writing to James Logan, 5th of November, 1719 : "And I wonder that no person can be found better fitted to be your Chief Judge than David Lloyd, one who has always showed himself to be a troublesome, ill-tempered man, and an in

veterate enemy of my poor husband." But we may conclude that the lady was preju diced. James Logan wrote to her son, young Penn, of Lloyd : " He is a man very stiff in all his undertakings, of a sound judgment, and a good lawyer, but extremely pertinacious and somewhat revengeful." The Penn, or aristocratic faction, which was represented for many stormy years by James Logan, had no cause to like David Lloyd, who both opposed and exposed them with virulence, but by no means without reason. We find him in 1704 Speaker of the Assembly, active in politics. On the 30th of April, 1706, letters from England to him, which he showed to Logan, cause Logan to decline any future responsibility in paying the Judge his salary of £100 a year. Logan was Receiver for Penn; and though he declines to state why he can no longer pay the salary, one may suspect the cause very well to be the financial troubles into which the Penns had fallen. In this same year, 23d September, a new attempt is made to establish equity. In fact, the minutes of the Council report almost noth ing else about this period. For instance, 14th of November, " The Govr. laid before the Board a long & tedious Bill ... for Establishing Courts of Judicature." This document is evidently the result of David Lloyd's efforts. His name among others appears shortly before as being ordered to draw up a bill of which the fifth head is, "That the Governor and Council shall be a Court of Equity for all matters whatever." Evidently Lloyd had itemized this somewhat too general proposition. In a remonstrance to the Governor in 1710, his hand is again plain : " But we complain not of the indecencys we meet with, merely as they respect ourselves, 'Tis the poor Province, & the peo ple .. . who are left without law, to be racked by officers. . . whilst their lives and estates are Subject to be Tryed by Courts set up without Law. . . and what danger the people here are in, for thy not passing amongst others the bill about the