The defendant’s lawyers were James Alexander and William Smith, two of the foremost members of the New York bar, who had been advising him throughout. When the suit began in the new court of equity, Alexander and Smith adopted the bold course of denying the validity of the court itself, arguing in particular that it was illegal for the Governor to establish it of his own free will and without the consent of the Assembly. This plea was more than an attack on the jurisdiction of a court: it was a direct accusation that the Governor had overstepped the limits of his authority and had violated the law. The three justices of the Supreme Court were divided on the merits of the plea. Two of them, James Delancey and Frederick Philipse, rejected it out of hand. They belonged to the Governor’s faction. But the Chief Justice was of another mind, and that was the critical thing, for he was Lewis Morris. (Notice the names. We are back in the familiar atmosphere of the Morris-Delancey feud, James being the son of old Stephen Delancey.) Morris had opposed obnoxious governors in the past, and he would not back down before Governor Cosby. There was this added point about Lewis Morris, that he had functioned in the New Jersey Council as did Van Dam in New York’s, so his pocketbook stood in the same kind of jeopardy if Van Dam should be condemned. The Chief Justice therefore agreed with the counsel for the defense that the court of equity was no true court, and he openly defied the Governor with these words: I take it the giving of a new jurisdiction in Equity by letters patent to an old Court that never had such jurisdiction before, or erecting a new Court of Equity by letters patent or ordinances of the Governor and Council, without assent of the legislature, are equally unlawful, and not a sufficient warrant to justify this Court to proceed in a course of Equity. And therefore by the grace of God, I, as Chief Justice of this Province, shall not pay any obedience to them in that point.[4] The Governor was away in New Jersey at the time but, hearing what had happened, he wrote Morris a furious and insulting letter, and demanded a copy of the remarks he had made in court. The Chief Justice complied, at the same time publishing the remarks (through the Zenger press) as a gesture of studied contempt for all the Colony to see. This was more than Cosby was willing to stand. On May 3, 1733, he wrote to the Duke of Newcastle: Things are now gone that length that I must either discipline Morris or suffer myself to be affronted, or, what is still worse, see the King’s authority trampled on and disrespect and irreverence to it taught from the Bench to the people by him who, by his oath and his office, is obliged to support it. This is neither consistent with my duty nor my inclination to bear, and therefore when I return to New York I shall displace him and make Judge Delancey Chief Justice in his room.[5]