change threw into the
hands of the Governor and Council extraordinary power over the judiciary
of the colony. The county justices, who sat in the lower courts, were
the appointees of the Governor, and could not effectually resist his
will. Moreover, as appeals lay from them to the General Court, they were
powerless before the decisions of the superior tribunal. Thus the
judiciary of the colony lost its only democratic feature.

The Burgesses, undismayed by their defeat in this matter, at this same
session entered a vigorous protest against the King's right to annul
acts of Assembly. During Berkeley's administration his Majesty had
seldom exercised this power, but of late many acts had been repealed by
proclamation without the consent or knowledge of the Assembly. This, the
Burgesses claimed, was an unwarranted infringement upon the privileges
granted them "by sundry Comissions, Letters and Instructions", that was
most destructive of their cherished liberties and rights. And they
demanded that henceforth their statutes should have the force of law
until they had been "Repealed by the same Authority of Generall
Assembly".[964] But they received no encouragement from the Governor.
What you ask, he told them, "is soe great an entrenchment upon ye Royall
authority that I cannot but wonder you would offer at it".[965]

Thereupon the House determined to appeal directly to the King,
petitioning him not only to give up the right of repealing laws by
proclamation, but to permit the continuation of appeals to the Assembly.
Since the Governor refused to transmit their address to his Majesty,
they forwarded copies to Secretary Jenkins by two of their own
members--Thomas Milner and William Sherwood.[966]

This address received scant consideration from the King and the Privy
Council. "Whereas," James II wrote Effingham in October, 1685, "it hath
been represented unto us by our Committee for Trade and Plantations,
that they have received from some unknown persons a paper entitled an
address and supplication of the General Assembly of Virginia ... which
you had refused to recommend as being unfit to be presented.... Wee
cannot but approve of your proceedings.... And wee doe further direct
you to discountenance such undue practices for the future as alsoe the
Contrivers and Promoters thereof."[967] For their activity in this
matter Sherwood and Milner "in ye following year were both turned out of
all imployments to their great damage a