8 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



more particularly in the famous rolls, " On the Supremacy of 

 the Sea of England and the Right of the Office of Admiralty 

 in the same," as well as in the Black Book. The rolls referred 

 to show that England had the sovereign jurisdiction in regard 

 to the maintenance of peace and security in the Sea of 

 England, but there is no evidence to indicate that that Sea 

 extended far from the coast, or that the rights exercised 

 differed from those put in force by other maritime states in 

 the waters adjoining their territory. A great deal was made 

 later of these rolls and of the ordinance of John, as proving 

 that the Angevin or Plantagenet kings possessed the sov- 

 ereignty of the sea; but beyond the jurisdiction in question, 

 which doubtless was exercised in the Straits of Dover and 

 perhaps in the Channel when the coasts on each side were in 

 the possession of the crown, there is a lack of evidence to prove 

 that any claim of the kind was made. In those times the 

 kings of England were not infrequently styled Lords of the 

 Sea, but this appears to have been either because of the ex- 

 istence of this "sovereign lordship" in the neighbouring 

 waters, or, more usually, because they held at the time the 

 actual command and mastery of the seas in a military 

 sense. There were long periods when nothing was heard of 

 any pretension by England to a special sovereignty of the sea, 

 and, in point of fact, the characteristic features of appropriation 

 were always absent. No tribute was levied on foreign 

 shipping passing through the Channel or the narrow seas, even 

 when both coasts were held by the king, as was done by 

 Denmark at the Sound and by Venice in the Adriatic. After 

 the battle of Agincourt, when Henry V. had been recognised 

 by the Treaty of Troyes as the future king of France and the 

 power of England was predominant, the proposal of Parliament 

 that such tribute should be levied was set aside. Foreign 

 ships of war freely navigated the adjacent seas without asking 

 or receiving permission to do so. The sea fisheries, moreover, 

 were not appropriated. All people were at liberty to come 

 and share in them, and this freedom to fish on the English 

 coast was expressly provided for in a long series of treaties 

 with foreign Powers. The so-called sovereignty of the seas 

 exercised by England thus differed from the actual sovereignty 

 enjoyed by Venice and the northern states of Europe, whose 



