Fellow delegates elected Pendleton the first Speaker of Virginia's new House of Delegates, although he dislocated his hip in a fall from a horse in March 1777 which caused him to miss the first session. He used crutches the rest of his life. Pendleton, along with Thomas Jefferson and George Wythe, revised Virginia's law code. He became Judge of the High Court of Chancery in 1777. When Virginia created a Supreme Court of Appeals in 1778, Pendleton was appointed its first president, and served until his death. In 1788 delegates unanimously selected Pendleton president of the Virginia Ratifying Convention. When George Wythe took the chair, Pendleton addressing colleagues thus: "...the people by us are peaceably assembled, to contemplate in the calm lights of mild philosophy, what Government is best calculated to promote their happiness, and secure their liberty. This I am sure we shall effect, if we do not lose sight of them by too much attachment to pictures of beauty, or horror, in our researches into antiquity, our travels for examples into remote regions".