i8 
Land & Water 
July i8, 1918 
The British Prize Court: By E. S. Roscoe 
— — — ^HE modem era of British Prize Law dates from 
I ^tlK- appointment, in October, 1798, of Sir William 
I Siott (afterwards Lord Stowell), whose famous 
I judgments during the Napoleonic War have 
-M. become classical. When, however, war was 
declared by France in January. 1793. the judge of the High 
Court of Admiralty— in war time the Prize Court— was Sir 
James Marriott. The complete separation between the 
advocates and proctors, who practised at Doctors Commons 
in the Civil Law Courts— Ecclesiastical and Admiralty— and 
the barristers and ^solicitors, who were to be seen in the 
Common Law and Chancery Courts, was never more vividly 
exemplified than by the apptjintment of Dr. Marriott to the 
judgeship of the High Court of Admiralty in 1778. 
Though an advocate of Doctors Commons and King's Advo- 
cate since September, 1764, he was at the same time — sur- 
prising as it mav seem— a Cambridge don. Admitted to 
Trinity Hall in 1746. he became Master in 1764, an academic 
post wliich he filled for forty years. 
In the University, Marriott was a well-known figure- 
active, good-natured, pedantic, and rather foohsh. "His 
follies," wrote Gray to Norton Nicholls, in 1766, "let us 
pardon because he has some feeling and means us well." 
As a judge, Marriott will not be recollected for the vahie, 
either in substance or form, of his judicial decisions ; for one 
reason, because very few have, in fact, been accurately 
preserved. Some of his judgments in the American War, but 
only in an abbreviated form, may still be read in a volume 
of- reports which was pubUshed in 1801. In one decision, 
dealing with an American ship and its cargo, Marriott flew 
into a remarkable tirade against the Colonists, which indi- 
cates his want of discretion and how he moved others 
than members of the University to laughter. He finished 
this extraordinary judgment by this singular sentence : 
There is a wildness in this law (that by which all inhabitants 
of the New Republic were to swear allegiance to it) that 
marks strongly the real character of the Americans ; it is 
perfectly savage, and breathes the spirit of persecution, 
impressed with wliich (as having been persecuted or per- 
secuting) the last settlers from hence went forth to sow 
the seeds of cixdl war, which they left behind them, and of 
which now Great Britain reaps the liarvest ; it is among 
the many proofs \vc find in the history of mankind that 
conquerors and new settlers in all ages have adopted, in a 
very great degree, the manners of the ancient inhabitants, 
and taken even the features, colours, and temper of the 
climate. 
Still, Dr. Marriott's name is closely connected' with the 
procedure of the High Court of Admiralty, both in prize 
and "instance" cases. Apparently, during the first years 
of the French Wars he fosmulated more precisely 
the practice of the Prize Court which, up to the time 
of the Peace of Versailles, in 1783, had been somewhat 
vague. The form in which Marriott left the procedure of 
his tribunal continued unaltered for many years, during 
the memorable judgeship of Stowell, and again during the 
Crimean W'ar, when Dr. Lushington filled the office of judge. 
It was not until 1914 that a new set of Prize Rules were 
issued and the ancient procedure which had continued in 
much the same shape for centuries disappeared. 
At the beginning of the French War of 1793 the regulations 
as to procedure were embodied in a few sections of the Prize 
Act, as it is popularly called, or, more strictly. An Act for 
the encouragement of seamen and more effectually manning 
of His Majesty's Navy. In fact, a title of this kind had 
always been at the head of the so-called Prize Acts, which 
were passed on the beginning of hostilities emphasising the 
national desire for legality and regularity in the considera- 
tion of the demands for the condemnation of neutral property. 
This feeling and the judicial anxiety for impartiality between 
belligerent and neutral was well expressed by Marriott in a 
case which came before liim in 1775 : 
\\'henever the scales were even, a neutral was to have the 
turn in his favour: for this Court was to judge up- 
rightly between this nation and all others ; and it must 
lean for the honour of English justice (as well as bravery) 
against any possible charge or suspicion of any selfish 
national prejudice.* 
An ecclesiastical atmosphere surrounded the entire pro- 
cedure of the Prize Court. The suit was begun bj' a monition, 
a document whose object was to admonish or warn persons 
inter ested in a ship or goods which had been captured that 
•La Prosperitc." Hay and Marriott's Decisions, p. 167! 
unless they appeared to defend their interest the Court would 
proceed to judgment. The materials on which it acted in 
the first place were the ship's jjapcrs and the answers to 
the Standing Interrogatories which were of immoderate 
length and in a common form and were put to some member 
of the crew of a captured ship. 
The contrast between the subjects of the Prize 
Court jurisdiction and its medieval procedure was ' very 
striking. Officers and men of the Royal Navy, owners and 
crews of privateers from every port in Great Britain here 
made their claims for captures in all parts of the world. 
Thrilling tales of the sea and of individual bravery were 
narrated in the ancient precincts of Doctors Commons ; 
dLscussions on the burning subject of joint capture, on which 
might depend the pecuniary fortune of a naval commander, on 
charter parties, and bills of lading, on the ownership of goods, 
whether neutral or hostile, occurred day by day between 
learned Doctors of Law in the oak-panelled hall which 
served as the Prize Court, over wliich the Master of Trinity 
Hall presided. 
Of the medi;eval procedure of the Prize Court, a definitive 
sentence is an illustration. It begins; "In the name of 
God. Amen. We, James Marriott," and then follow three 
pages of recitals. At the end we come to the material part, 
commencing with the grave words : " Therefore, we, James 
Marriott, Knight and Doctor of Laws, the 'judge aforesaid, 
first calling upon the name of Christ, and .having God alone 
before our eyes, and having heard Cqunsel learned in the 
law thereupon do hereby pronounce decree and declare " 
Then follows the declaration that the ship, being manned 
by Spaniards, is subject to confiscation. The descent 
from the solemn invocation to the audience of counsel learned 
in the law and to the condemnation of a belligerent ship 
exemplifies in a few words the connection between ecclesias- 
tical law and the Prize Court not less than the evolution of a 
legal system which dated from the Middle ' Ages and which 
civil lawyers, the descendants of ecclesiastics versed onl\' in the 
Canon Law, retained as their preserve. 
In war time it was a most profitable,one— ^from which the 
general legal profession was tenaciously and successfully 
excluded, until 1857, when the College of Advocates was 
dissolved, tlie buildings of Doctors Commons pulled down and 
the Admiralty and other Courts which had been there held, 
were opened to the whole legal profession. But many points 
of practice were only preserved in the memories and note- 
books of the civilians who were gathered in Doctore Commons. 
To an age accustomed to see commercial litigation con- 
ducted by barristers and solicitors who specialise on the 
particular subject of commercial and maritime law, it is 
almost inconceivable that the Prize Court — and, for that 
matter, the Admiralty Court — was at the beginning of the 
great European struggle of the eighteenth century presided 
over by the head of a Cambridge College, and that the prac- 
titioners in it were a small group of advocates and proctors 
whose main business was concerned with the Ecclesiastical 
Courts. The contrast between the Prize Court of 1793 and 
that which began to sit in September, 1914, which is engaged 
in unravelling legal and commercial knots in regard to the 
ownership of cargoes, tied by the complications of modem 
international commerce, exemplifies the evolution of English 
law, and recalls also a phase of English Ufe which has van- 
ished as completely as the buildings of Doctors Commons. 
In their place we see to-day commercial offices, and over its 
quiet garden passes the busy traffic of Queen Victoria Street. 
Instead of Dr. Marriott and a small knot of generally undis- 
tinguished but "respectable and learned practitioners" 
proficient in the civd law, are a number of commercial 
lawyers, a modernised procedure, and a Court sitting side 
by side and in the same building with the other branches 
of the Supreme Court in London, of which it now forms 
an integral part. 
The political and national importance of the little legal 
organisation beneath the shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral 
the interest which its wo-': in the Prize Court had for the 
officers and men of the British Navy and of the privateers 
sailing under letters of marque, were out of all proportion to 
the space it filled in the pubhc eye, even at the beginning of 
the eighteenth century. When we look back to it, we reah^e 
that, though it seems to-day a bit of pure antiquarianism it 
was in Its time a living and important element of the British 
national system, one which vanished under the pressure of ' 
external movements which English law has always sooner 
or later reflected. 
