6 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



ness and insecurity that reigned on the sea led merchants, in 

 the absence of effective sovereign authority, to form associations 

 among themselves for mutual protection, and to maintain by 

 force the security of navigation in the common interest. Inde- 

 pendent princes at first made use of the armed fleets of those 

 voluntary associations, and later, as their power grew stronger 

 and better organised, they took over the duty of policing the 

 neighbouring seas under an admiralty jurisdiction of their own, 

 which enforced the maritime laws and customs, such as the 

 Laws of Oleron, that had been gradually developed among the 

 merchant associations. In the thirteenth century this duty of 

 exercising supreme admiralty jurisdiction on the neighbouring 

 sea came to be regarded as a prerogative of sovereign power, 1 

 and it was only a short step further to the assertion of an 

 exclusive dominion. It was natural that this assumption of 

 sovereignty on the sea should first be made by the great trad- 

 ing cities of Italy, who then controlled the important traffic 

 between the east and the west, and whose shipping was to be 

 found in all the ports of Christendom. It was also natural 

 that the Italian jurists should be the first to attempt to give 

 it a legal sanction, by assigning a large part of the bordering 

 sea for the exercise of those sovereign functions which were 

 originally confined to the maintenance of order and the punish- 

 ment of delinquents. There is little doubt that the assumption 

 of sovereign jurisdiction in this way was advantageous to 

 navigation and commerce in those times, though later, with the 

 extension of commercial intercourse and the increased security 

 of the sea, it became burdensome and unnecessary. 



There are good reasons for the belief that the English claims 

 to the sovereignty of the sea originated in this humble way 

 by the exercise of jurisdiction in the interests of peaceful 

 commerce some time after the Norman Conquest, and in all 

 probability first of all in the Channel or the Straits of Dover. 

 The earliest indication of it is to be found in the much- 

 discussed ordinance which King John issued in 1201. By that 

 ordinance any ships or vessels, "laden or empty," which 

 refused "at sea" to lower their sails when ordered to do so 

 by the king's lieutenant or admiral in any voyage appointed 

 by the Council, and resisted the demand, were to be reputed 



1 Twiss, op. cit., 143, 144. Reddie, Maritime International Law, i. 41. 



