bought salt, hides, and herrings, and having loaded their ship in Carlingford, they made sail for their own country. Contrary winds drove them to an anchor in the haven of Skerys. There, on the 6th of February, Walter Soly, an Englishman, and many sailors in a great ship with two tops came with staves and swords, carried the sailors off to his own ship, and kept them for ten days below deck. Then he landed them on the Isle of Man, and left them there robbed and spoiled of the ship and her cargo to their utter undoing. The matter was referred as we have said -to the Judge of the Admiralty Court, so that proceedings should be taken against this turbulent Englishman. But how the suit ended we know not; probably the Frenchman had to put up with the loss of his ship and of his goods. But the facts of the case, stated nakedly in a legal document, show how intolerable was the existing state of affairs on the seas. The growing commerce of England, which was contemporary with the increasing prosperity of the English towns and seaports, was hampered by lawlessness on the seas just as was that of the towns of Flanders and of France.

But though the Admiralty Court failed in what was its most important object, it had yet obtained by the end of the sixteenth century jurisdiction as a municipal maritime tribunal. Here was a tribunal in touch with seamen and the business of the sea, and so, with the practical sagacity which has always characterised Englishmen, the Admiral's Court became a court for the decision of purely maritime disputes. Some seaport towns had "port" or marine courts, in which local mercantile disputes could be tried, but, where these were not to be found, no special

tribunal was available but the court of the admiral. That a conflict should arise between local jurisdictions, such, for instance, as that of Yarmouth, and the admiral's jurisdiction is not surprising, nor as regards purely maritime causes is it surprising that the latter jurisdiction should ultimately prevail. Neither the admiral nor his deputy ever forgot that it is the business of a good judge to enlarge his jurisdiction, and however jealous the common law courts might be of the Admiral's Court, suitors must have found it convenient. But to discuss the conflicts which continued for so many years between the Admiralty Court and the other High Courts of the kingdom would take us outside the particular scope of this chapter.

Fixity and certainty of jurisdiction is altogether inconsistent with the growth of a tribunal or with the development of society. It is only after civilization has come to a particular point that the law courts of a nation can be regarded as having settled functions, and the early history of the Admiralty Court is noticeable for periodical fluctuations. Limitations placed on the Court, and never very strictly enforced, were relaxed by Henry VIII., and thus, with the jurisdiction at one period expanding, at another contracting, it has gradually attained a distinct and limited, but well recognised, maritime jurisdiction.

With the later part of the history of the High Court of Admiralty we are not now concerned. The object of this chapter is to emphasise the historical point which stands out so prominently in the Select Pleas of the Court of Admiralty that the extent of piracy in the Middle Ages was in a great degree the cause of the genesis of the

Court of the Lord High Admiral. 'The origin of the Admiralty Court can be traced with tolerable certainty to the period between the years 1340 and 1357. It was instituted in consequence of the difficulty which had been experienced in dealing with piracy or 'spoil' claims made by and against foreign sovereigns." This is a concise summary of the evidence which has now at length placed this portion of our legal history on a sound historical footing, and removed it from that region of uncertainty in which, from an absence of detailed research, so many of our legal institutions have remained. But we should hesitate to adopt the above conclusion without qualification. For as already pointed out, the Lord High Admiral seems from time to time to have acted as a judge in criminal and civil matters in the thirteenth century. The truer view is that the subject of piracy in relation to the Admiralty Court is of great importance, because by reason of its being an international question, it caused this court to be sanctioned and protected in order to be of use for a particular purpose. Without this protection it is possible that the admiral's jurisdiction would have languished and expired, or have been crushed by the opposition of other courts. The legislation in the reign of Richard II. (1), though intended to limit the jurisdiction of the Admiral's Court to things done upon the sea, was an express recognition of a special jurisdiction, and though the admiral and his deputies did not acquiesce in this limitation, it was in fact a very efficient safeguard of a jurisdiction which had come into being in a haphazard and unusual

manner.

(7) 13 Ric. 2, st. 1, c. 5; 15 Ric. 2, c. 3.

CHAPTER V.

SOME SOURCES OF ENGLISH MARITIME LAW.

THERE is a natural tendency among those who are concerned with the administration of the law to criticise its results and its form, and to trouble little about its sources. This is especially the case with maritime law, which now consists largely of decisions on the construction of mercantile documents, and on the interpretation of commercial customs. Amidst this structure of case law primary principles are almost lost. It is to some—and to an important extent among early European collections of sea law, that we must look for some foundations. of English maritime law, collections also which bring before us vividly illustrations of mercantile and maritime life in the Middle Ages. Of these collections of enactments, decisions, and customs, the most ancient is the Rhodian Sea Law (a), which connects mediæval times with Byzantine jurisprudence. For centuries the socalled Rhodian Sea Law has formed a groundwork for learned commentators and for erudite scholastic criticism. According to the best authorities it appears that the portion containing forty-seven chapters is the most ancient and most authentic part, and was "probably enacted by one of the Isaurian Emperors Leo or Constan

(a) For information on the Rhodian Sea Law the reader is referred to Mr. Walter Ashburner's learned and exhaustive work, The Rhodian Sea Law. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1909.

tine Copronymus." Further, this code has no connection with Rhodes, and was only given the title it bears in order to add weight to its authority. The portion which has been often called Part II. is somewhat in the nature of an appendix, probably compiled at the same time as the forty-seven chapters, and was placed in this form because it was concerned with matters of small importance. The so-called Prologue appears to be of much later date than the two other parts-when and by whom it was compiled is a matter of complete uncertainty, and it has even been suggested that it was "an exercise composed in the law school which was established at Constantinople in the middle of the eleventh century" (b). Speaking broadly, the essential part of the Rhodian Sea Law regulates the relations of the owner, the master, and the merchant who is freighter of a vessel, as well as the conduct of the It is somewhat surprising that a code which is concerned with maritime business at a time when commerce on the seas was in a very primitive and simple condition, should have been regarded with so much respect in England even as late as the end of the eighteenth century. For the Rhodian Sea Law appears now to be more interesting as a legal relic than as a chapter of ancient jurisprudence which can affect modern law.

crew.

In medieval times, the two bodies of sea laws which deserve the closest attention are the Judgments of the Sea or the Laws of Oleron, on which the Laws of Wisbuy and the Purple Book of Bruges are substantially founded, and the Customs, which are part of the Consulate of the

(b) The Rhodian Sea Law (Ashburner), p. 74.