360 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



bounded by the Indies belonging to Spain, while the northern 

 coasts of Britain, having no countries lying against them, were 

 washed by an immense and open sea. He held that the pro- 

 clamation of 1604, fixing the limits of the chambers in con- 

 nection with acts of hostilities between the Spaniards and the 

 Hollanders, ought not to prevail against the provisions of the 

 treaty, for the proclamation was subsequent to the treaty, and 

 it would be unjust to allow it to lessen the extent of the ter- 

 ritory (sea) over which protection was to be afforded by the 

 terms of the contract. It was not a valid argument, Gentilis 

 continued, to say that the boundaries expressed in the proclam- 

 ation that is, the King's Chambers had been observed long 

 before by common usage in relation to similar cases. 1 



There is no doubt, however, that although Gentilis as an 

 advocate took this line of pleading, the boundaries of the 

 King's Chambers from headland to headland, as defined by 

 James in his " plat," were received as settled law in regard to 

 neutrality both in the English courts and on the Continent. 2 

 Gentilis further urged that the limit fixed by the Italian jurists 

 for the extent of jurisdiction viz., 100 miles from the coast, 

 unless the proximity of another state interfered with its 

 application also was in force off the British coasts, a view 

 which the court declined to accept. 



Yet, although this principle of extending and limiting the 

 territorial jurisdiction to 100 miles was not accepted in the 

 English Courts, we find it made use of in the diplomatic 

 correspondence of the time. The Earl of Salisbury in a 

 letter to Cornwallis, the English ambassador at Madrid, ex- 

 planatory of James's proclamation in 1609 forbidding un- 

 licensed fishing, did not seek to defend the action of the 

 .king by reason of any intrinsic right of the crown of 

 England to sovereignty in the neighbouring sea, but rather 

 upon what he alleged was the practice of the civil law. A 

 sovereign prince or statu, he said, was Mundi Dominus, Lex 

 Marls, both because of the protection afforded to navigation 

 in the adjacent sea and from prescription : the adjoining sea, 

 as Baldus said, pertained to the territory of the neighbouring 



1 " Etiam non nocet, quod objicitur et longe antehac longo usu servatos in 

 hujusmodi qusestionibus hos ease fines qui expressi nunc sunt Edicto," p. 30. 



2 Gryphiander, De Imulis Tractatus, Frankfort, 1623, cap. 14, s. 46. 



