href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@24882@[email protected]#DOC_128" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">no. 128, no. 143, and no. 165; sentences or decrees of the judge in docs. no. 143, no. 150, and no. 155; inventories of prizes in docs. no. 33 and no. 161; an account of sales in doc. no. 186.

If a party to a prize appealed from the sentence of the vice-admiralty court (docs. no. 151 and no. 196), he was required to give bond (doc. no. 152) for due prosecution of the appeal in England. From 1628 to 1708 such appeals were heard by the High Court of Admiralty; after 1708 they went to a body of privy councillors specially commissioned for the purpose, called the Lords Commissioners of Appeal in Prize Causes (see doc. no. 151, note 1). A specimen of a decree of that tribunal reversing the sentence of a colonial vice-admiralty court is in doc. no. 195.[4]

Piracy being from its very nature a less formal proceeding than privateering, there are fewer formal documents to present as essential to its history. In the seventeenth century, there are instances of trials for piracy by various courts: e.g., the Court of Assistants in Massachusetts in 1675 (doc. no. 41, note 1) and the Massachusetts Superior Court in 1694 (doc.