[977] In the definitions of the boundaries of lands and fisheries in Anglo-Saxon charters such descriptions occur as “up midne streame,” “ūt on Temese oð midne streām,” “up midne streame by halfen streame,” &c. Birch, Cartulariurm Saxonicum.
[978] “Quicquid etiam ex hac parte medietatis maris inventum et dilatum ad Sandwic fuerit sive sit vestimentum sive rete arma ferrum aurum argentum, medietas monachorum erit, alia pars remanebit inventoribus.” Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici, iv. 21.
[979] Le Mirroir des Justices, c. iii., “la sovereine seignurie de tote la terre jeqes el miluieu fil de la meer environ la terre.”
[981] Brit. Mus. Hargraves MSS., No. 98; printed by Moore, Hist. of the Foreshore, 362.
[982] A Treatise relating to the Maritime Law of England, 10.
[984] Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 30,221, fol. 50. The opinion of the Trinity House was given in November 1686. In 1677 the Privy Council, on a petition of the fishermen of Hastings complaining of the French fishing on the coast, sent to the Cinque Ports for an account “of the old limitations used to be put upon the French and others in their proceedings in that fishing,” and also ordered two ships to be sent “to forbid the French to fish on the coast as having no license thereto, and to drive them away from thence” (ibid.) On the other hand, Jeakes, in his Charters of the Cinque Ports, written in 1678, states with reference to the powers “by land and sea” conferred on the Ports by various charters, that per mare did not mean altum mare, the high sea, where the Admiral had jurisdiction, but only the “havens, creeks, and arms of the sea, so far as can be judged in a county, where the land is on both sides,” p. 69.
[986] 31st Oct. 1563, tit. i. par. 27, “Ne qua in mari vis fierit vel suis subditis, vel sociis, vel peregrinis, sive belli, sive alterius rei causa intra conspectum a terra vel portu.” Bynkershoek, Quæstiones Juris Publici, lib. i. cap. viii. De Domini Maris, c. ii.