A WHALE AT MERSEY IN I299. I5I 



that term would be applied by zoologists at the present day, 

 while the statement that an empty cask (dolium vacuum) was 

 provided for its removal from Mersey Island to Stanford renders 

 it more probable that the creature was, not a whale, but a 

 porpoise, more especially as the capture took place in the month 

 of May. 



Two slight misprints in the Latin extract may be corrected, 

 namely, cum expend uiiius hominis equitio should read hominis 

 .equitis, and in the footnote eadem balana instead of balona. Mr. 

 Waller criticising the expression usque Staunford ad curiam, says 

 it is not apparent what court is meant. Probably we are to 

 understand that in the month of May, 1299, the King and his 

 court happened to be sojourning at Stanford, and so thither the 

 so-called "whale" was carried as "a royal fish" to the 

 Sovereign. 



A discussion of this point would carry us too far from the 

 subject, but it may be stated that from the Quo Warranto Rolls, 

 temp. Edw. I., it appears that a stranded whale belonged as " a 

 royal fish " to the king, but might be claimed as a " wreck of 

 the sea " by any subject able to prove that he and his ancestors 

 had been " immemorially in seizin of all manner of wreck of the 

 sea, to wit royal fish, wrecked ship, and of all other things which 

 would be called wreck of the sea " Whether at the present day 

 in a claim against the Crown for a stranded whale a plea would 

 be of any avail which averred that " a whale is not a fish,' 

 would be a question for the lawyers to settle ; it would at all 

 ■events give rise to an amusing conflict of opinion between the 

 law-officers of the Crown and the zoological experts who might be 

 called as witnesses on behalf of the claimant. 



An earlier instance of the occurrence off the Essex coast of a 

 cetacean of some kind is mentioned by Mathew Paris in his 

 Chronica Majora, wherein we read of a whale which, coming up 

 the Thames in the year 1240, could scarcely pass between the 

 piers of the bridges, and was driven up the river as far as 

 Mortlake. " Ad manerium autem regis quod Mortelac dicitur, 

 insequentibus multis navigatoribus cum unfibus et balistis et 

 arcubus perveniens, ibidem jaculorum ictibus vix est peremptus." 

 This may have been a small Rorqual, but from its ability to pass 

 the bridges is more likely to have been a Porpoise. An Essex 

 specimen of Rudolphi's Rorqual (Balanoptcra bovealis) was captured 



