112 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



but really i crews, and the provisions of 1634-99 extended it to disputes 

 voyJap^^^ between fishing-ships' crews and shipless fishers from the 

 tains, rr "Shore. This extension was only tolerable so long as the 

 I I judges observed the forms of justice and the nomads out- 

 |j numbered the settlers. But the judicial qualities of the 

 ' admiral-judges made angels weep and convoy-captains laugh. 

 The admiral-judges had been ordered since 1670 to keep 

 journals; but 'few admirals', said Captain Graydon (1701), 

 'are capable of keeping journals '. They were ' illiterate and 

 in this respect very indolent men ', said Lord Vere Beauclerk 

 1(1730); so that journals were never written because the 

 Ajournalists could not write. Nor were their moral superior 

 iko their intellectual qualifications. Captain Lee (1736) 

 I described them as ' very often very ignorant and very im- 

 ipudent fellows'; Captain Falkingham (171 6) as 'a nuisance 

 ■*!lu the country, . . . making their authority scandalously 

 subservient to their interest ' ; and the almost annual reports 

 of the convoy-captains between 1675 and 1757 almost 

 invariably reiterated Captain Taverner's accusation (17 14) 

 that ' the admirals were seldom or never at leisure to hear 

 any complaints whatsoever except one of their favourites ' or 

 one of themselves ' was a party '. The convoy-captains met 

 this absurd condition of affairs by an ingenious device. They 

 were made Judges of Appeal by the act of 1699, and in order 

 to save expense ran the Court of Appeal and Court of First 

 Instance into one Court over which they and the ' admirals ' 

 jointly presided, but as they had power to reverse the 

 decision of the ' admirals ', they treated the admirals as 

 advisers only. Lord Vere Beauclerk's apology for this 

 odd arrangement (1728), that 'unless the captains of the 

 men-of-war are present to assist them at their Courts their 

 meetings would be nothing but confusion and their orders of 

 no use ', is itself odd, but throws a new light on the origin of 

 assessors. 

 latldfor Lord Vere Beauclerk added that the habit which the 



