438 Mr. J. Couch on Cornish Whales. 



was raised out of the water; but he never saw any one that 

 leaped entu-ely out of it. 



Wg have ah'eady referred to a supposed prerogative of the 

 crown, by which whales and porpoises are claimed as belonging 

 exclusively to the king ; and this very remarkable right, however 

 it arose, is recognized in an act of parliament passed in the year 

 1324— the 17th of Edward the Second, Stat. i. c. 2 — where 

 "Ballenas et Sturgiones captos in mari vel alibi intra regnum, 

 exceptis quibusdam locis privilegiatis per Reges^^ are particularly 

 specified, but without, in this instance at least, any mention of the 

 grampus or porpoise — the latter so highly esteemed as a royal 

 dish at table, on which it was accustomed to appear, even so 

 late as the reign of Charles the First. Whales, porpoises, and 

 thulapolls formed part of a feast made by Bishop Cosin in that 

 reign. I suppose the last-named to be grampuses, and I believe 

 they have also been called whirlpols ; the latter a corruption of 

 the former, which signifies what they have also been called; 

 northcapers, from their residence near Ultima Thule, whence 

 the Bishop of Durham might obtain them. If strictly inter- 

 preted, this act of parliament would authorize a royal claim to 

 any whalebone whale — hallena and sturgiones, for balcena and sturio 

 — even when taken in a regular fishery within the jurisdiction 

 of the British Admiralty ; and that it was not suffered to lie a 

 dead letter under the Norman sovereigns, appears from a grant 

 made by King John to some merchants of Bayonne, who rented 

 the monopoly of this fishery, through the British Channel, 

 from St. MichaePs Mount to Dartmouth, for which they paid 

 him ^10 yearly — a large sum at the time, when a quarter of 

 wheat was sold for 126*. The same claim also appears from the 

 grant, already quoted, of the Droits of Admiralty to Sir John 

 Trelawny, in the reign of the second Charles. It was in acknow- 

 ledgment of the same prerogative that, on the authority of 

 Tonkin, as quoted by Lysons in the early part of the last (18th) 

 century, Mr. Corker of Falmouth, Mr. Kemp of Bosteage, and 

 some other gentlemen, procured a patent for a whale-fishery, and 

 were at some expense in providing expert harpooners; but it 

 did not answer — not, however, for want of fish, if they could 

 have taken them. They disposed of their patent among the 

 bubbles of 1720, and "saved themselves harmless." 



Tonkin mentions the existence of two fisheries for cetaceous 

 fishes, that of the Porpoise and the Whale, the former of which, 

 he says, would have been of great value, if they had understood 

 how to extract the oil and make the most of it. He once saw, in 

 1720, between eight and nine score of porpoises (but which, from 

 their number, may have been the Leading Whale), taken in a 



