And as to what may be most proper for the condemning of Prizes in those parts, I humbly conceive it cannot be Regularly done, but by an Authority grounded upon a Commission under the Broad Seale.
All which I humbly submitt with the Assurance That I am
Sir
Your must Humble Servant
Geo. Bramston.
To be sent to Lord Nottingham[4] if it came from him.
[1] Public Record Office, Admiralty 1:3666, p. 162. The writer of this report, George Bramston, LL.D., was a notable practitioner of the civil law, and from 1702 to 1710 was master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His uncle writes of him in his autobiography, a few years before this, "George is doctor of law, ... fellow of Trinity Hall, and is admitted at the Commons, and lives there in some practice, but very good repute." Autobiography of Sir John Bramston, p. 29. To whom the report was nominally addressed is not clear, but it was intended indirectly for the enlightenment of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne, whose wifely partiality had in May of this year raised him to the office of Lord High Admiral. As such, he nominally presided over the High Court of Admiralty; finding the need of having its activities supplemented by additional prize courts in the colonies, and instructed by this and similar reports, he on Dec. 7 applied for authority under the great seal to commission colonial governors (vice-admirals) to hold prize courts.
[2] Doctors' Commons (see ch. VIII. of Sketches by Boz and ch. XXV. of David Copperfield), near St. Paul's, was the headquarters of the doctors of the civil law and of the admiralty and other civil-law courts.
[3] A typical commission of a vice-admiral (Barbados, 1667) may be seen in the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, II. 187-198.
[4] The Earl of Nottingham was one of the two secretaries of state.