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 importance, reversed.[Footnote: See Paper on Appeals to the Lords of Trade from Colonial Courts, by Harold D. Hazeltine, Report of the American Historical Association for 1894, 299.] This revisory jurisdiction, though questioned and occasionally evaded or thwarted by the colonial governments, became solidly established long before the Revolution.[Footnote: "Two Centuries' Growth of American Law," 12, 18, 264.] In but one case did a colonial court formally ignore a judgment of reversal. This was in 1738, when the Superior Court of Judicature of Massachusetts, at its sittings in York County, in what is now the State of Maine, disobeyed an order of the King in Council made on appeal from one of its judgments, and when it was repeated a year later, adhered to its original position.[Footnote: Frost _v._ Leighton, Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, III, 246.] The amount involved was trifling, and the Lords of Trade and Plantations made no further effort to enforce their order. The natural effect of this court of appeal at London was to keep the public proceedings of the colonies in line with the common law of England, so far as related to its fundamental principles.