This was a day to settle old grudges. When a man got too much whiskey he was very quarrelsome and wanted to fight.... It was, also, a great day for the gingerbread and molasses beer. The cake sellers had [tables] in front of the courthouse, spread with white cloths, with cakes piled high upon them and with kegs of beer nearby. I have seen the jurymen let down hats from the windows above, get them filled with gingerbread and a jug of beer sent up by rope. About four or five o'clock the crowd began to start for home.[63] For anyone who had business with the court, whether he or she came as a petitioner or a penitent, the justices, clerk, sheriff, and other officials represented the presence of power and authority as colonial Virginia knew it. But it was a presence in which men stood on little ceremony or formality with each other. Except in unusual circumstances all were likely to be laymen, for in colonial Virginia there was little formal education in the professions and, at most, one might have attended lectures at the College of William & Mary or a school in England. If the gentlemen justices were widely read in history, philosophy, government and literature--as well they might be--these advantages of their means and leisure did not destroy their appreciation for the issues they were asked to decide. For in their own right they were planters who had to face and deal with these issues in their own lives. Accordingly, their decisions, as reflected in the minutes of their sessions, were based on this realism which comes from personal experience. Yet it remained true that the gentlemen justices of the county court were, for most practical purposes, beyond any control of the community they governed. Any complaint about the manner in which the justices conducted their business could only be directed to the governor.[64] Should the court cease to function for long periods of time because of quarreling among the justices, or should the occurrence of an emergency require replacement of justices, the freeholders of the county had no method of dealing with their problem except through the pressure of public opinion.[65] Even with the best of good will among the members of the court, they could not escape the usual difficulties of handling legal matters before a bench of lay judges, who not only lacked professional training, but were handicapped by the scarcity and cost of law books.[66] Decisions which seemed wrong could, from earliest colonial times, be appealed to the governor and General Court. Later the establishment of District Courts, and their successors the Circuit Courts, provided an intermediate tribunal for determining matters which turned on points of law. But the business of the gentlemen justices on court days was a mix of legal and administrative matters, and in the latter area of activity there was no appeal. _Election Days_