With regard to the most important attribute of maritime sovereignty—the right to exclude others from an equal use of a particular sea by prohibiting navigation, at least of vessels of war, and from fishing in it, or by imposing dues and conditions for the liberty—there is scarcely a scrap of evidence to show that any authority of the kind was exercised by England in the adjacent seas. The circumstance is noteworthy, inasmuch as other countries which then enjoyed undoubted maritime sovereignty, did not permit unrestricted navigation or fishing in the seas specially under their control, as Venice in the Adriatic, and Denmark in the northern seas and in the Baltic. The evidence concerning the liberty of fishing in the sea along our coasts is dealt with in another chapter, but it may be said here that this liberty was provided for in a series of treaties with other Powers. As for liberty of navigation, it was asserted, or rather implied, by Selden, in guarded language, that the kings of England anciently possessed the power of refusing it;[41] but the evidence relates for the most part to passports and safe-conducts “by land and sea,” and to the impressment of vessels, referred to above. There appears to be not a single fact to prove that the liberty of innocent navigation in the English seas was ever interfered with by the king. The Parliament of Ireland, it is true, passed an Act in 1465 prohibiting all foreign vessels “from going to fish at Ireland among the king’s enemies” without first obtaining a license, on pain of forfeiture of the vessel. But it is clear from the preamble that the Act was passed because foreign vessels frequenting the Irish coast for fishing were supplying the king’s enemies with money, arms, and provisions.
Nor is there any valid evidence that tribute was ever imposed on foreigners for liberty of navigation in the sea of England. A case frequently quoted to the contrary was the imposition of a duty by Richard II., in 1379, on merchant vessels and fishing smacks, to provide means for the defence of the eastern coast and the security of navigation and fishing. At that time the English navy had almost ceased to exist, through the mistaken policy of Edward III. in the latter part of his reign. In 1377 a French and Spanish fleet had not only scoured the seas, but plundered and burned Rye, Folkestone, Hastings, Plymouth, and other towns on the southern coast, which they ravaged. In the following year they continued their depredations on the English coast, and held such complete command of the sea that “no victualler, fishing boat, or any other, could pass or return without being taken.”[42] In 1379, as the enemy still held the sea and the coast, Parliament, after consultation with the merchants, decreed that certain duties should be levied to provide means to secure the safeguarding of the sea, and among these was one on vessels laden with goods belonging to merchants of Prussia, Norway, or Scania. Selden says this ordinance applied to foreign as well as English vessels, which had therefore to pay for passage through the sea “just as one may exact payment for passage over one’s field.”[43] But there is no evidence that the tax was levied on other than English vessels; and in any case it is clear from the preamble that it was a voluntary arrangement, and probably made at the request of the merchants themselves, who had been petitioning the king and Parliament for protection.[44] It is noteworthy also that the keepers of the northern sea were not to convoy the vessels to or from Flanders and Calais unless they were paid for doing so.
An incident which occurred early in the next century shows the temper in which the Parliament regarded the sovereignty of the narrow sea, as well as the caution of the king. By that time the English navy had recovered its strength and France lay prostrate at the feet of Henry V., and the Parliament petitioned the king to levy an impost on all foreign ships passing through the Channel, in emulation, no doubt, of the practice of the Danish kings at the Sound. It was a few years after the battle of Agincourt, and the Treaty of Troyes, by which Henry was recognised as the future king of France, had just been concluded. “The Commons pray,” ran the petition, “that seeing our Sovereign Lord the King and his noble progenitors have ever been Lords of the Sea, and now by the grace of God it has come to pass that our said Lord the King is Lord of the shores on both sides of the sea, such tribute should be imposed on all strangers passing through the said sea, as may appear reasonable to the King for safeguarding the said sea.”[45] The answer of the king was that he would consider it (soit avise par le Roy), the usual formula of refusal. In the following year Henry was again involved in war with France, and he died in 1422 and nothing more was heard of the proposal. But it is extremely doubtful if he or any other English king would have ventured to adopt the policy recommended by the Commons. The shipping that passed through the Channel was far more voluminous and important than that passing through the Sound, and the waterway could not be so easily commanded, as by guns from the shore. Any measure of the kind would doubtless have led to a combination of other maritime Powers against England, which would have been fatal to the attempt. It may be noted that the Parliament based their proposal on the king’s possession of both shores; and this, in accordance with the opinions of the Italian lawyers of the preceding century, whose authority was great, carried with it the right of sovereignty over the intervening sea.
The statement in the petition that the kings of England had ever been lords of the sea is true at least to the extent that on several occasions previously the title was applied to them, and this was usually at times when they possessed actual supremacy and mastery over the seas in a special manner, though it may also have implied the idea of sovereign jurisdiction. Nearly a century earlier than the above petition we find the same title used by Edward III., who is peculiarly identified with the naval glory of England, and he too refers to his progenitors as having been lords of the sea. In a mandate to his admirals in 1336, the king, after stating that twenty-six galleys of the enemy were reported to be on the coasts of Brittany and Normandy, said: “We, calling to mind that our progenitors, the Kings of England, were Lords of the English sea on every side, and also defenders against the invasions of enemies before these times; and it would greatly grieve us if our royal honour in such defence should be lost or in any way diminished in our time, which God forbid, and being desirous with the help of God to obviate such dangers and to provide for the safety and defence of our realm and people, and to restrain the malice of our enemies: We strictly require and charge you” to proceed against the galleys, &c.[46] Later in the same year, in a commission to certain nobles, prelates, and the Warden of the Cinque Ports respecting measures to be taken against the Scottish fleet, which was attacking merchant and other ships, and had ravaged Guernsey and Jersey, the king desired it to be remembered that his progenitors the kings of England, in similar disturbances between them and other lords of foreign lands, were in all bygone times “lords of the sea and of the passage across the sea,” and he would be much afflicted if his royal honour should be in his time impaired.[47] These declarations, made in the first half of the fourteenth century, indicate clearly enough at least the pretension to special interest and jurisdiction in the narrow sea and the Straits of Dover on the part of the earlier kings. No English king deserved the title of Lord of the Sea better than Edward III. Only a few years after the above missives were written he gained the memorable victory over the French in the battle of Sluys, and in 1350 the equally great victory over the Spaniards off Winchelsea (“Les Espagnols sur Mer”), commanding the fleet in person on each occasion.[48]
Fig. 1.—Edward’s Noble.
It appears to have been in connection with the former victory that Edward coined his famous gold noble, in which the obverse bears the effigy of the king, crowned, standing in a ship with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, while the reverse bears the legend from St Luke, Jesus autem transiens per medium eorum ibat, “but Jesus, passing through the midst of them, went his way,” which Nicolas thinks was meant to indicate the action of the king in passing through the French fleet at the battle of Sluys. The impress on the obverse has been usually regarded as symbolic of Edward’s power and sovereignty on the sea. The unknown author of The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, written some ninety years later, makes frequent reference to Edward’s noble,—
“Ffor iiii thynges our noble sheueth to me,
Kyng, shype, and swerde, and pouer of the see,”[49]—
and it is always mentioned by the English writers on the sovereignty of the sea as evidence that Edward exercised that sovereignty. A recent author[50] doubts whether there was any connection between Edward’s noble and the battle of Sluys or the claim to the sovereignty of the sea; but at all events in the next century, in the reign of Henry VI., when the naval power of England had again sunk to a low point, the noble was made an object of jest and derision among foreigners, especially the Flemish and French. They told the English to take away the ship from their noble and put a sheep on it instead—an allusion, no doubt, to the growth of sheep-farming in England.[51]
If Edward intended to symbolise his naval power and sea sovereignty by the device on the gold noble in the early part of his reign, it was certainly inappropriate towards the end of it. The navy had been starved for the sake of the army, and when the Spaniards defeated the English fleet and were masters of the sea, complaints became rife as to the insecurity of the country. The king had then to listen to language from his Parliament to which he was unaccustomed, and which must have galled him. There are many instances in our history where the Commons have shown their spirit and temper when they thought the navy was inadequate for its duties, and on the occasion in question, in 1372, after granting a naval subsidy, they called the king’s attention to the fact that while twenty years previously, and always before, the navy was so noble and so numerous in all the ports, coast towns, and rivers that the whole country deemed and called him King of the Sea,[52] and he and all his country were the more dreaded by sea and by land by reason of the said navy, it was then so decreased and weakened from various causes that there was scarcely sufficient to defend the country, if need were, against royal power, by which there was great peril to all the realm.[53] From this complaint of the Parliament it would appear that the title of king or Lord of the Sea was applied in a popular sense, to signify the great sea-warrior who had overcome his enemies and made himself master of the sea.