interwoven with the life of the people. Its form and color
differed in different colonies. Religious views and preferences
had had a large effect in shaping it. So had influences
proceeding from the civil war, the Commonwealth, and the
Restoration. Yet at bottom there was the same substructure in
Virginia as in Massachusetts, in Pennsylvania as in New York. It
was the common law of England as it existed in the days of the
last of the Tudor and first of the Stuart reigns.

This had been built into the foundations of American institutions
and kept firm in place, not only because the colonists were
habituated to it[Footnote: Fitch _v._ Brainerd, 2 Day's
(Conn.) Reports, 163, 189.] and themselves both English subjects
and the descendants of Englishmen of those days, but largely by
force of the British system of colonial government through the
Lords of Trade and Plantations. The ancient _aula regis_,
in which the king dispensed justice at first hand, had survived
in another form in the tribunal known as the King in Council.
This, so far as the colonies were concerned, was represented by a
standing committee of the Privy Council. It was substantially
the same thing as the Court of Star Chamber, but since 1640
without the extraordinary penal jurisdiction which gave that so
evil a reputation for Americans.[Footnote: Maitland, "Justice and
Police," 5.] This committee was after this restriction of its
powers known as the Lords of Trade and Plantations,[Footnote: It
was afterward and is now called the Judicial Committee of the
Privy Council.] and by its authority from the time when England
first had colonies of any commercial importance (and those in
America were the first) their statutes could be set aside and the
judgments of their courts, when of any considerable magnitude and