THE JURIDICAL CONTROVERSIES 363 



Callis, whose well-known lectures on the Statute of Sewers 

 were delivered in 1622. 1 Callis argued that in "our Mare 

 Anglicanum the king had, by the common law of England, 

 four " powers and properties " : sovereignty (imperium regale), 

 legal jurisdiction for the administration of justice, property in 

 the soil under the sea and in the water, and possession and 

 profits both real and persdnal. He cites in proof a number of 

 authorities, legal and historical, such as were cited later by 

 Selden. The statement in a case decided in the reign of 

 . Richard II. (1377-99), that "the sea is within the legiance of 

 the king as of his crown of England"; the charter of the 

 Admiral giving him power in maritime cases throughout the 

 realm of England ; the phrases in certain statutes ; the right to 

 wreck and royal fishes, and so forth, "proved the King full 

 Lord and owner of the seas, and that the seas be within the 

 realm of England." The king rules on the sea, he held, " by 

 the laws imperial" as by the Roole d'Oleron and others, but 

 only in the case of shipping and for merchants and mariners ; 

 his rights of property in the bed and waters of the sea, and the 

 personal profits (wreck, flotsam, &c.) accruing, were his by the 

 common law. Callis did not deal with fishing, nor attempt to 

 define the bounds of " the seas of England " in which the king 

 had property and jurisdiction. 



The interpretation of the law as to the rights of the crown 

 in the seas, as propounded by Callis, was followed by Selden 

 and Hale, and generally by the lawyers who came after him. 

 Lord Chief -Justice Coke, in his First Institute, which was 

 published in 1628, explains the old phrase "within the four 

 seas " (infra quatuor maria) as meaning within the kingdom 

 and dominions of England ; for if a man be upon the sea of 

 England he is " within the kingdom or realm of England, and 

 within the ligeance of the king of England, as of his crown of 

 England." In his Fourth Institute, which was not published, 

 however, till 1644, ten years after his death, when treating of 

 the Admiralty Court, Coke entered more fully into the question 

 of the rights of the crown in the seas of England; and, as 

 already mentioned, he looked upon the roll of Edward I., De 



1 The Reading of the famous and learned Robert Callis, Esqr., upon the Statute of 

 Sewers, 23 Hen. VIII., c. 5, as it was delivered by him at Gray's Inn in August 

 1622. 4th ed., 1824. 



