EARLY HISTORY 39 



royal power, by which there was great peril to all the realm. 1 

 From this complaint of the Parliament it would appear that 

 the title of king or Lord of the Sea was applied in a popular 

 sense, to signify the great sea-warrior who had overcome his 

 enemies and made himself master of the sea. 



There was another symbol or supposed symbol of the 

 sovereignty of the sea, which later became exceedingly prom- 

 inent viz., the striking of the flag or the lowering of the 

 top-sails to a king's ship, about which there is little to be 

 found in the records of those times. It is nevertheless with 

 this that the earliest of the records relating to the subject 

 is concerned, and it is a very interesting one. The famous 

 ordinance of King John which compelled the lowering of 

 the sails has given rise to much controversy. It was first 

 brought prominently to notice by Selden in 1635, 2 but it is 

 also contained in the little work of Boroughs on the Sovereignty 

 of the British Seas, which was written in 1633, although not 

 published till 1651, and that author transcribed it from a 

 manuscript in the possession of Sir Henry Marten, the Judge of 

 the Court of Admiralty. Selden gave as his authority for it, 

 " MS. Commentarius de Rebus Admiralitatis," without further 

 specification, and its authenticity was questioned by contem- 

 porary critics. Prynne, who, like Boroughs, was Keeper of 

 the Records, printed it in 1669 from the Black Book of the 

 Admiralty? and from the fact that the Black Book was lost 

 until quite lately, and the existence of Selden's manuscript 

 in the Bodleian Library was overlooked, and that used by 

 Boroughs unknown, some recent authors have regarded the 

 ordinance with suspicion. 4 The most elaborate account of 

 the various manuscripts containing the ordinance of John 

 is given by Sir Travers Twiss in the Introduction to the 

 Black Book of the Admiralty ; and through his efforts the 

 original Black Book, lost for more than half a century, was 

 found at the bottom of a chest in 1873. 5 Twiss gives the 



1 Rot. Parl., ii. 311. a Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvi. 



3 Animadversions, 108. 



4 Nicolas, op. cit., i. 156, but cf. ii. 481 ; Hannay, A Short History of the Royal 

 Navy, 15. Hannay, as well as the writer of the naval articles in Social England 

 (i. 138). was not apparently aware of the labours of Sir Travers Twiss mentioned 

 in the text. 



5 The Black Book of the Admiralty, i. Intro, xiii et seq., 129 ; iii. Intro, i, x. 



