44 THE -SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



Record Office, and the earlier parchments appear to have been 

 collected together in the reign of Edward III., in connection 

 with the consultations that the judges held in 1338 on the 

 subject of the maritime laws. 1 



The documents were first brought into prominence by Lord 

 Coke 2 and Selden, 3 both of whom published parts of them. 

 The handwriting belongs to the beginning of the fourteenth 

 century, and its contents show that it must have been drawn 

 up after 1304 and before 1307, in which year Edward I. died. 



The events that preceded may be summarised as follows. 

 During the war between Edward I. and Philip the Fair of 

 France it was concluded between them in the year 1297 that 

 notwithstanding the war there should be freedom of commerce 

 on both sides, or a truce for merchants, known as sufferance 

 of war, and in the following year certain persons were ap- 

 pointed by both kings to take cognisance of things done 

 contrary to this truce, and to pass their judgments according 

 to the law of merchants and the tenor of the sufferance 

 referred to. 4 On 20th May 1303 a treaty of peace and alli- 

 ance was signed at Paris, 5 the first article of which embodied a 

 declaration of amity and mutual defence of all their respective 

 rights, and the third that each would abstain from assisting 

 or succouring the enemies of the other. A little later in the 

 same year four agents or commissioners were appointed by 

 Edward and four by Philip to hear complaints and decide 

 upon them, and the English members were instructed to in- 

 quire into the " encroachments, injuries, and offences committed 



1 Chancery Rolls, Misc. Treaties and Diplomatic, Bdle. 14, No. 15. It is endorsed 

 De Superioritate Maris Anglice et Jure Ojficii AdmiraUatus in eodem. There are 

 several copies on separate membranes in the bundle viz., 1, 8, 12, 14, 15, and 

 they differ from one another, as indicated in the transcript in Appendix A. Prynne 

 (Animadversions, 109) says that besides the roll in the Tower from which Lord 

 Coke and Selden quoted, he discovered ' ' an ancient copy of it in the White Tower 

 Chappie," and among the Admiralty papers is a memorandum by Nicholas, undated, 

 but before 1631, on the records in the Tower respecting the Laws of Oleron aud 

 the Sovereignty of the Seas, in which he says that " in ye little closset there " a 

 record in French exists, dated in the time of Edw. I. or II., referring to the depre- 

 dations of Qrimbald. There is also a transcript in a collection of MSS. in the 

 British Museum (ffarleian, 4314) and a translation of the roll, in a hand of the 

 seventeenth century, in MS. Otho. E. ix. fol. 14. 



2 Fourth Institute, cap. 22, p. 1 42. 



3 Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvii., xxviii., xx. , xxiv. 



4 Rot. Pat., 26 Edw. I., part 2, rnemb. 24, in dorso. 5 Fcedera, i. 954. 



