30 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



from this time that the importance of "keeping the narrow 

 seas " began to be recognised in English policy. The command 

 of the Channel was not only of value in safeguarding the coast. 

 The Channel formed the great avenue of commerce between 

 the north and south of Europe. The merchant vessels from 

 Venice, Genoa, and the Mediterranean, from Spain and France, 

 passed northwards through it on their way to Flanders and the 

 Baltic, and those from the Hanseatic towns and northern parts 

 had in like manner to traverse it in their southern voyages. 

 The Channel was thus crowded with shipping in summer, and 

 the nation which commanded it had the power of interrupting 

 the commerce of other nations, and consequently retained a 

 potent political weapon in its hands. It is this aspect of 

 "keeping the narrow sea" which forms the burden of the 

 remarkable old poem, The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye. 



Moreover, in the period following the Norman Conquest 

 another condition came into existence in connection with the 

 security of the commerce passing through the Channel, which 

 throws light on the origin of the English claim to sovereignty 

 over it. As already mentioned, owing to the lawlessness that 

 prevailed on the sea after the break-up of the Roman empire, 

 when pirates and freebooters infested every coast, it became 

 customary for merchants to associate themselves together for 

 mutual protection. Their vessels sailed forth in fleets under 

 the charge of an elected chief, called the " admiral," and armed 

 vessels were frequently fitted out by them for the express 

 purpose of purging the sea of pirates. In the course of time 

 this duty of maintaining the police of the seas was taken over 

 by sovereign princes, who exercised their jurisdiction through 

 an admiralty, and put in force the old " laws of the sea " which 

 had gradually grown up among the merchant associations. 1 

 In the thirteenth century this supreme admiralty jurisdiction 

 came to be regarded among the principal states of Europe 

 as a prerogative of sovereign power, and it is about this time 

 and in this connection that we first find certain evidence 

 of the claim of England to the sovereignty of the adjacent 

 sea. The Plantagenet kings, or at all events some of them, 

 asserted the right of "maintaining the ancient supremacy of 

 the Crown over the Sea of England " by exercising jurisdiction 



1 Twiss, The Law of Nations in Time of Peace, 244 ; ibid., In Time of War, 142. 



