Keepe then the sea, about in special
Which of England is the town-wall.
As though England were likened to a citie,
And the wall enuiron were the sea.
Kepe then the sea, that is the wall of England:
And then is England kept by Goddes hande;
That as for any thing that is without,
England were at ease, withouten doubt.”
England first formally claims dominion of the sea, about A.D. 1416.
That the author of these curious metrical rhymes represented the feelings of the age is, in some measure, confirmed by the fact that, towards the close of the reign of Henry V., the Parliament of England, for the first time, asserted their right to the dominion of the sea in all their more important formal documents, or rather to its sovereignty. “The Commons do pray,” ran these documents, “that seeing our sovereign lord the king and his noble progenitors have ever been lords of the sea,” &c., &c. Nor were these claims, then, whatever they may have been in former ages, nominal titles. Without citing the opinions of Hugo Grotius, and other jurisconsults, on the necessity of a prince proclaiming by an overt act that he is lord of the sea, there can be no doubt that the English, from the earliest periods, did at least assert, if unable at all times to maintain, the dominion of the English Channel and a large portion of the North Sea. In the year 1674[627] the extent of the dominions of the British sovereign in the eastern and southern sea was ascertained and admitted to reach from the middle point of the land of Vans Staten, in Norway, to Cape Finisterre in Spain; a large extent of sea which England then asserted, and has since the reign of Charles II. maintained by many hard-fought naval engagements. Indeed, so far back as the reign of King John, we have already noticed, in the records of his marine laws, one to the effect that if a lieutenant of a king’s ship encounter any vessel or vessels, laden or unladen, that will not strike and veil their bonnets[628] at the command of the lieutenant of the king, they were to be taken and condemned.