The Sovereignty of the Sea / An Historical Account of the Claims of England to the Dominion of the British Seas, and of the Evolution of the Territorial Waters

by Thomas Wemyss Fulton

[62] Collection des Lois Maritimes, i. Intro. pp. li, 129; iii. Intro. p. xi.

[63] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvi.

[64] “Quanquam tamen, ad primam vocem ipsorum Anglicorum, idem Johannes Willes velum suum declinavit,” &c., Fœdera, viii. 273; “omnes tamen inermes, et velum suum, ad primum clamorem Anglicorum declinantes,” ibid., 277.

[65] Chancery Rolls, Misc. Treaties and Diplomatic, Bdle. 14, No. 15. It is endorsed De Superioritate Maris Angliæ et Jure Officii Admirallatus in eodem. There are several copies on separate membranes in the bundle—viz., 1, 8, 12, 14, 15,—and they differ from one another, as indicated in the transcript in [Appendix A]. Prynne (Animadversions, 109) says that besides the roll in the Tower from which Lord Coke and Selden quoted, he discovered “an ancient copy of it in the White Tower Chapple,” and among the Admiralty papers is a memorandum by Nicholas, undated, but before 1631, on the records in the Tower respecting the Laws of Oleron and the Sovereignty of the Seas, in which he says that “in ye little closset there” a record in French exists, dated in the time of Edw. I. or II., referring to the depredations of Grimbald. There is also a transcript in a collection of MSS. in the British Museum (Harleian, 4314) and a translation of the roll, in a hand of the seventeenth century, in MS. Otho. E. ix. fol. 14.

[66] Fourth Institute, cap. 22, p. 142.

[67] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvii., xxviii., xx., xxiv.

[68] Rot. Pat., 26 Edw. I., part 2, memb. 24, in dorso.

[69] Fœdera, i. 954.

[70] Selden, op. cit., lib. ii. c. xxvii., quoting from Rot. Pat., 31 Edw. I., m. 16, which reads as follows: “Des enterprises, mesprises, et forfaitz en Treue ou en Sufferance, entre nous et le dit Roi de Fraunce, dune part et dautre, es costeres de la mer Dengleterre et autres per decea et ausint per deuers Normandie et autres costeres de la mer per de la.”

[71] The King of France ordered John de Pedrogue, a celebrated seaman of Calais, to collect a fleet there and proceed with it to Holland against the Count of Flanders, who had invested Zierikzee. Included in the fleet were eleven Genoese galleys, under Reyner de Grimaldi, who was given the chief command by Philip, with the title of “Admiral,” John de Pedrogue acting under him. Nicolas (op. cit., i. 373) gives a description of the fight.