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Collisions, Prohibitions, and the Admiralty Court in Seventeenth-Century London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2011

George F. Steckley
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When Anthonis Van den Wyngaerde executed his sweeping panorama of London in 1543, he drew some two dozen ships in the Thames, but only four of them downstream from St. Katherine's Dock. A century later, however, Wenceslaus Hollar carefully represented well over a hundred seagoing vessels in a ribbon of masts winding down river as far as the eye could see. By the 1650s a mariner noted the difficulty of navigating the Thames at low tide, especially during “mackerel time,” and Admiralty Judges at Doctors' Commons near St. Paul's were hearing complaints that congestion in the river was endangering London's environment. Petitioners alleged in 1658 that Jenkin Ellis, a shoemaker and wharf owner, had so exploited his foothold of just ten yards along the north shore of the river, by selling permission to anchor ships eight-and ten-abreast, that the entire bank from St. Katherine's Stairs to the Dock was ruined. It had once been, said witnesses, a “fair sandy ground” where “people might pass on foot,” where watermen could “wax and tallow their boats.” But after Ellis had arrived in 1640, the bank slowly turned to “mud…ooze and dirt,” and “the current of the Thames near shore” where the ships lay was now so “hindered…that if not timely prevented,” the river would be “choked up.” Fires carelessly tended aboard the ships when they were grounded at low tide threatened houses in the entire precinct. When riding at anchor near the shoemaker's wharf, the vessels forced lightermen to row in midriver “against the strength and current of the tide.”

The rising number of ships in English waterways had apparently reduced everyone's margin for error in the seventeenth century. For collisions in the Thames and elsewhere were providing the civil lawyers of London's Admiralty Court with a stream of cases. Ironically, this litigation, it is argued here, reveals both the resourcefulness of England's maritime judges and the major cause of a decline in their authority during the late Stuart decades.

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Law and History Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 2003 , pp. 41 - 68
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Copyright © the American Society for Legal History, Inc. 2003

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References

1. See, for instance, Matson v. Naylor, High Court of Admiralty, Public Record Office, Kew (hereafter HCA) 13/71, fols. 446–47, examination of William Cox, May 1657. Most of the cases cited in this article are unreported and in manuscript only. Admiralty scribes often gave case titles in more than one version, so I have adopted a standard and usually shortened title for each of the manuscript cases cited. In these citations only the names of the ships are italicized.

2. Office, promoted by Gwyn v. Ellis, 1659, HCA 3/46, fol. 2; 3/47, fol. 387; 3/48, fols. 190, 577; 13/72, fol. 209, examinations of John Stokes, Humphrey Hutchins, and Thomas Lovell.

3. Davis, Ralph, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry (London: Macmillan, 1962), 87–88.Google Scholar

4. The sixteen years sampled for this study are italicized in Table 1. The research design was to read all instance cases in these years that were determined by decree, arbitration, or reported agreement. Warrant numbers and the literature on Admiralty jurisdiction suggest that the last relatively active period of instance litigation was from 1655 to 1662, and therefore these eight years were studied in an effort to discover reasons for decline. Then, for comparison, eight pairs of years were chosen for study at suitable intervals over the rest of the century. Warrants issued to begin Admiralty cases of all kinds exceeded decrees, court-ordered arbitrations, and recorded settlements in the sample years by a ratio of roughly seven to one, so that thirty such official determinations in collision cases suggest that perhaps as many as two hundred suits had been filed.

5. Admiralty decrees are found at HCA 24. Collision cases were frequently determined by interlocutory decrees inscribed only in the court's Act Books (HCA 3). Therefore, both the court's decrees and procedural record have been used to discover all collision decisions resulting during the sixteen sample years from interlocutory, first, or second (“definitive”) decrees, arbitrations assigned by the judges, or out-of-court agreements recorded by the scribes. In cases for which it is available, information has also been drawn from the Warrant Books (HCA 38), libels and allegations filed with the decrees (HCA 24), and examinations, that is, testimony taken at London or on commission elsewhere (HCA 13).

6. HCA 38/22–23, Warrant Books including 1639; HCA 38/31–37, Warrant Books covering 1655–62.

7. Holdsworth, William S., A History of English Law (1903–1972; reprint, London: Methuen, Sweet, and Maxwell, 1966), 1:564.Google Scholar I have verified that warrants for prize cases of the late 1650s were not being entered in the registries found at HCA38. Matson v. Naylor (1657), HCA 13/71, fols. 446–17, testimony of William Cox, May 1657.

8. Cocke, Charles George, English Law (London, 1651), 185.Google Scholar

9. Brooks, C. W., Lawyers, Litigation and English Society since 1450 (London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 1998), 29–33.Google Scholar

10. Coquillette, Daniel R., The Civilian Writers of Doctors' Commons, London: Three Centuries of Juristic Innovation in Comparative Commercial and International Law (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1988), 298.Google Scholar

11. Coquillette, Daniel R., “Legal Ideology and Incorporation, IV: The Nature of Civilian Influence on Modern Anglo-American Commercial Law,” Boston University Law Review 67 (1987): 937–17.Google Scholar

12. Prichard, M. J. and Yale, D. E. C., eds., Hale and Fleetwood on Admiralty Jurisdiction, (Publications of the Seiden Society, vol. 108, 1993), cxvii–cxxix.Google Scholar For two examples of this general approach, see Holdsworth, English Law, 1:552–59; Bourguignon, Henry J., Sir William Scott, Lord Stowell: Judge of the High Court Admiralty, 1798–1828 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 24–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Modern accounts taking this approach usually rehearse the complaints about common law encroachment published in the early 1660s by such civilian Judges as John Godolphin, Richard Zouch, and John Exton.

13. Holdsworth, English Law, 8:459–62; Oldham, James, The Mansfield Manuscripts and the Growth of English Law in the Eighteenth Century (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 2:1118–21.Google Scholar

14. I have not followed collision cases from Admiralty into the common law courts, although the findings here suggest the usefulness of doing so.

15. General conclusions about the decline in Admiralty litigation must await further study. Warrant totals from the 1620s through the 1640s were swollen by prize actions. Until their number can be extracted, it will be difficult to determine how sharply instance litigation fell away in the last half of the century or how many actions in the early decades had resulted in out-of-court settlements. Moreover, because the scribes did not regularly identify Admiralty plaintiffs by origin, it will not be easy to determine whether fewer provincial litigants were coming to Doctors' Commons late in the century. For these issues as they relate to other courts, see Muldrew, Craig, “The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England,” Historical Journal 39 (1996): 915–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sharpe, J. A., “[Such Disagreement Betwyx Neighbours]: Litigation and Human Relations in Early Modern England,” in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. Bossy, John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 172–87Google Scholar; Horwitz, Henry and Polden, Patrick, “Continuity or Change in the Court of Chancery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries?” Journal of British Studies 35 (1996): 24–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Champion, W. A., “Recourse to the Law and the Meaning of the Great Litigation Decline, 1650–1750: Some Clues from the Shrewsbury Local Courts,” in Communities and Courts, ed. Brooks, Christopher and Lobban, Michael (London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 1997), 179–98.Google Scholar

16. For a convenient survey of the seventeenth-century politics of Jurisdiction, see Bourguignon, Sir William Scott, 15–30. See also these earlier studies: Yale, D. E. C., “A View of the Admiral Jurisdiction: Sir Mathew Hale and the Civilians,” in Legal History Studies, 1972: Papers Presented to the Legal History Conference, Aberystwyth, 18–21 July 1972, ed. Jenkins, D. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975), 87–109Google Scholar; Levack, Brian P., The Civil Lawyers in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973)Google Scholar; and Steckley, G. F., “Merchants and the Admiralty Court during the English Revolution,” American Journal of Legal History 20 (1978): 137–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. Capp, Bernard, Cromwell's Navy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 9; Lord Protector v. Joshua (1657), HCA 3/47, fol. 401; 3/48, fol. 40.

18. Thomson and others v. Elizabeth (1609), HCA 3/27, fol. 170; 13/40, fols. 41–42; 24/ 73/259, 261.

19. Fortrey and others v. Elizabeth and Robbins (1628), HCA 13/46, fols. 63–66, 452, 508.

20. Newman and others v. Rose and Crown (1679), HCA 3/54, fols. 2, 244, 379; 13/78, examinations of Andreas Veale, Robert Biffen, Harbert Alwyn, David Lockwood, William Lee, Samuel Stone; 13/131, answers of Jacob Lucy and Samuel Swinock; 24/118/42, 24/ 119/11, 15, 47, 153, allegations and decree.

21. Busbridge v. Chalk Hoy (1608), HCA 3/27, fol. 164; 24/73/43, 392.

22. Mustard and others v. Hound (1678), HCA 3/54, fols. 55–56, 128; 13/78, 27 May 1678, and examinations of John Badland, Joris Wind, James Mathews, Richard Wakefield, Edward Barnet, William Hersey; 24/119/36.

23. London's share of Newcastle's shipments, already at 69 percent in 1615, would reach 80 percent by the end of the century. Dietz, Brian, “The North-East Coal Trade, 1550–1750: Measures, Markets and the Metropolis,” Northern History 22 (1986); 286, 288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar John Evelyn, Fumifugium (1661), in The Writings of John Evelyn, ed. Bédoyère, Guy de la (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995), 138, 147–48.Google Scholar

24. Keith Wrightson estimates London's importation of coal in 1640 at 300,000 tons. See Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 170. Total London imports from Newcastle and Sunderland had reached 395,125 tons by 1682/83. Dietz, “North-East Coal Trade,” 292, table 2. John Chartres estimates four to six voyages per year for a collier in the Newcastle-London trade. See “Food Consumption and Internal Trade,” in The Making of the Metropolis: London, 1500–1700, ed. Beier, A. L. and Finlay, Roger (London: Longman, 1986), 189.Google Scholar Davis implies that the average collier supplying London carried less than one hundred tons, many presumably only thirty-five to fifty tons. Davis, Rise of English Shipping, 60, 72, 207.

25. Mustard and others v. Hound (1678), HCA 3/54/66, fol. 128; 13/78, 27 May 1678, examinations of John Badland, Joris Wind, James Mathews, Richard Wakefield, Susanna Potter, Edward Barnett, William Hersey; 24/119/36, decree.

26. Davis, Rise of English Shipping, 92–93.

27. Yaxley and others v. Freeman (1657), HCA 3/47, fol. 517; 3/48, fols. 302, 360, 453, 542, 600; 3/49, fols. 27, 121; 13/70, 24 Nov. 1654, examinations of John Page, Richard Cockett, Samuel Brown, George Putt; 13/71, fols. 366–68, examinations of Richard Caw-cot, Samuel Brown, William Fisic; 24/111, 322, libel; 24/112/62, 209, allegations; 24/113/ 67, 212, definitive sentence and bill of expenses; High Court of Delegates, Public Record Office, Kew (hereafter DEL), 5/16, decree. For Yaxley as a veteran collier master, see Howell, Roger, ed., Monopoly on the Tyne, 1650–58, (Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1978), 39–43.Google Scholar

28. For a fleet of sixty colliers leaving Newcastle together in October 1658, see Sorrell v. Agreement (1659), examination of Edward Keete, HCA 13/72, fol. 711. For nearly seventy merchantmen and convoy leaving Portsmouth in 1696, see Lubbock, Basil, ed., Barlow's Journal (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1934), 2:459–60.Google Scholar For fleets of merchantmen leaving or arriving together in the Downs, see Steckley, G. F., ed., Letters of John Paige (London: London Record Society, 1984), 116, 129.Google Scholar

29. Lord Protector v. St. Jacob (1658), HCA 3/48, fol. 132; Sanborn, F. R., Origins of the Early English Maritime and Commercial Law (New York and London: Century Co., 1930), 295Google Scholar.

30. Huntington and co. v. Waterhound and Constant (1656), HCA 3/46, fol. 400; 3/47, fol. 61; 24/112/65, allegation on behalf of Huntington.

31. Swyer and co. v. Phoenix (1660), HCA 3/49, fol. 104; 13/72, fol. 208, examination of Henry Tiddiman; 24/113/173, allegation on behalf of Church; 24/114/89, definitive sentence.

32. Bourguignon, Sir William Scott, 71, 94; Prichard and Yale, eds., Hale and Fleetwood, vi, xlvi. An eighteenth-century Admiralty practitioner noted that the Judge must consider the circumstantial evidence submitted by the crews of both ships. HCA 30/1042, 304.

33. Ditton and co. v. St. Christopher (1608), HCA 24/72, printed foliation, 144, allegations on behalf of Ditton and co.

34. Ibid., printed foliation, 12, allegation on behalf of Hacker and Bond; 24/73, manuscript foliation, 444, decree.

35. See Bourguignon, Sir William Scott, 97.

36. Barnardo and others v. Sarah (1609), HCA 3/27, fols. 358, 376; 13/39, examinations of George Wood and Thomas Maynard, 5 Nov. 1607, Thomas Davis, 3 May 1608, Edward Goodale, 23 May 1608; 24/73, manuscript foliation, 269, decree.

37. Abbott and others v. Trial (1629), HCA 13/47, fol. 349ff., examinations of Edward Arblebeere, Thomas Humphrie, Edward Merritt; 24/85/198, decree.

38. Hall v. Accord (1656), HCA 3/48, fol. 210; 24/111/189, libel; 24/112/240, sentence. It was more than five years after the collision before Hall received the £19 decreed him by the court.

39. Beake and co. v. Piper (1655), HCA 3/46, fols. 38, 51, 84, 100, 372, 377, 382; 24/111/274, libel; 24/112/74, decree.

40. Harper and co. v. Adventure (1678), HCA 24/118/9–10, allegations.

41. Law and co. v. Samuel (1659), HCA 24/112/244, allegation on behalf of Lee.

42. Cooper and co. v. Samuel's Delight (1659), HCA 13/264, examinations of William Thurloe, William Bedinham, Mordecai Steele.

43. Renew v. Hopewell (1698), HCA 24/125/333, allegation for Humble.

44. Harper and co. v. Adventure and Gravenor and co. (1678), HCA 24/118/10, allegation for Harper.

45. Marsden, R. G., ed., Select Pleas in the Court of Admiralty (Seiden Society, 1892, 1897), 1: lxxiiGoogle Scholar: “With the possible exception of the award of arbitrators in the case of Handcocke c. Payne … no trace occurs during the sixteenth century of the rusticum Judicium—or division of loss where both ships are in fault for a collision.” See Select Pleas, 2: lxxxiii–lxxxv, for Marsden's earliest summary of seventeenth-century collision decisions. He gives virtually the same Ust in his Treatise on the Law of Collisions at Sea, 7th ed. (London: Stevens and Sons, 1919), chap. 6, especially 158–63. See Bourguignon, Sir William Scott, 96–101.

46. Harbyn v. Berry (1648), Burrell, 235.

47. Cooper and co. v. Samuel's Delight (1659), 13/264, examinations of William Thurloe and others; 24/114/34, sentence, 9 December 1659. Although the interlocutory decree of 13 November 1657, which reduced damages by half, was suspended by agreement of both parties to allow further allegation and proof, it was essentially reinstated in the definitive sentence of 9 December 1659. HCA 3/47, fol. 509, 13 Nov. 1657, 3/48, fol. 181, 30 Nov. 1658.

48. Yaxley and co. v. Freeman (1657), HCA 24/113/67. The entry in the Act Book for 21 November 1657 reports that the new draft was accepted and promulgated by the Judges on that day, within hours presumably after the first draft was rejected by Godolphin. The signed decree itself, however, is dated 25 November.

49. Harper and co. v. Adventure (1678), HCA 3/54, fol. 54, sentence; 24/118/10, allegation for Harper; 24/118/9, allegation for Gravenor and co.

50. Jermine and co. v. Castle (1679), HCA 3/54, fol. 97; 13/78, 13 Sept. 1677; 24/118/ 47–48, allegations for Shadforth and co.; 24/118/55 and 24/119/14, allegations for Jermine; 24/119/44, decree.

51. Renew v. Hopewell (1698), HCA 3/61, fols. 85, 96; 24/125/333, allegation for Humble; 24/126/16, allegation for Humble; 24/126/71, decree; Burrell, 280–81.

52. Renew v. Hopewell (1698), HCA 3/61, fol. 96. Marsden found the first application of the rule in Williams v. Marten (1675) (Law of Collisions, 7th ed., 162), and he describes eighteenth-century applications (163–65). Simpson offers the eighteenth-century comment about the formula. HCA 30/1042, p. 335.

53. For a modern treatment of detention, see Marsden, , The Law of Collisions at Sea, British Shipping Laws 4, rev. McGuffie, K. C. (London: Stevens and Sons, 1961), 537–65.Google Scholar A witness thought it appropriate to seek damages for freight forfeited when a collision prevented safe arrival. Mustard and co. v. Hound (1678), HCA 13/78, examination of Joris Wind, 31 May 1678. Owners of the William alleged a loss of £5 to £10 for delay of her voyage from Gainsborough to Shields, but the case was settled without Judicial decision. William Huntington and co. v. Waterhound (1656), HCA 3/47, fol. 61; 24/112/65, allegation for Huntington. Otter, master of the Providence, testified that his ship and her owners had lost a freighting already contracted in the port they had failed to reach because of the collision. Law and co. v. Samuel (1659), HCA 13/71/443, examination of William Otter.

54. Hall v. Accord (1656), HCA 24/111/189, allegation for Hall; 24/112/240, decree.

55. Yaxley and co. v. Freeman (1657), HCA 24/111/322, allegation that includes damages of £100 for the time detained; 24/113/67, three drafts of the decree, with one signed, 25 Nov. 1657.

56. Newman and co. v. Rose and Crown (1679), HCA 3/54, fol. 379, Judge's calculation; 24/119/153, decree; 24/118/42, allegation that includes the claim that £50 in freight was lost when the ship was idled for repairs.

57. Jermine and co. v. Castle (1678), HCA 24/118/55, allegation for Jermine.

58. If the median award in collision cases was somewhat lower than that in all other Admiralty cases from the sample years, £78 as opposed to £87, the average award in collision cases, £242, was roughly 30 percent higher than the average award in all other types of suit.

59. Commonly, however, court scribes would rearrange citations in other documents, such as the Act or Examination Books, and give owners' or masters' names first.

60. A memorial for Mr Green touching the settlement of the court of Admiralty, HCA 30/ 1036, fols. 150–52, may be notes for the M.P. by that name, who in 1646 reported to the Commons an ordinance for “settling a Jurisdiction in the Admiralty Court.” House of Commons Journals, iv, 720. Item six of the memorial reads: “For damage done by one ship to another in navigable rivers and upon anchors without buoys and the like: no remedy can be had at the common law against the ship; and the persons for the most part are poor and insolvent and so the subject left remediless if he should be denied remedy against the ship in the court of Admiralty.” For a mid-eighteenth century statement of in rem procedure in collision cases, see HCA 30/1042, 314. But a striking feature of the sample studied here is that only two of the thirty cases resulted in default Judgments. Instead, the defendants almost always chose to contest the action and rarely was possession of the ship awarded to a winning plaintiff, as in the Beake and Busbridge cases noted below. Part of the explanation may lie in the advent of divided damages.

61. HCA 30/1042, 207.

62. Beake and co. v. Piper (1655), HCA 3/46, fois. 38, 84, 100, 382; 24/111/274, libel for Beake; 24/112/74, decree.

63. Busbridge and co. v. Chalk Hoy (1608), HCA 3/27, fol. 164; 24/73, manuscript foliation, 392, decree.

64. Law and co. v. Samuel (1659), HCA 3/48, fols. 190, 602; 24/113/231, decree. See also Beake and co. v. Piper (1655), HCA 3/46, fol. 372.

65. Ditton and co. v. St. Christopher (1608), HCA 24/72, printed foliation, 12. Harbert Aylwin was described as merely a London agent for the Dartmouth owners, paying fees but not giving instructions to the lawyers, and his testimony was allowed. Newman and co. v. Rose and Crown (1679), HCA 13/78, examination of Harbert Aylwin, 4 Nov. 1678.

66. Ditton and co. v. St. Christopher (1608), HCA 24/72, printed foliation, 12, allegation.

67. Cooper and others v. Samuel's Delight (1659), HCA 3/48, fol. 361. A Harwich mariner serving Scottish owners was ordered to testify before his ship left London. Thomson and co. v. Elizabeth (1609), HCA 3/27, fol. 171.

68. Newman and co. v. Rose and Crown (1679), HCA 3/53, fol. 467; 3/54, fols. 44, 244.

69. Determination of the case could include one of the following: the Admiralty Judges' recognition of an agreement between the parties, their assignment to arbitration by appointed experts, the court's interlocutory, first, or second decree, or an appellate decision rendered by the High Court of Delegates. For comparative purposes here, the time consumed by appeal in the few cases taken to the Delegates has not been included in the calculations.

70. Wage cases of the sample years were decided on average in about a quarter of the time required for collision cases. This was due in part because of the summary process frequently used in wage litigation, but also because the court so often awarded full wages that defendants had little to gain from delay, except higher court costs. See Steckley, G. F., “Litigious Mariners: Wage Cases in the Seventeenth-Century Admiralty Court,” Historical Journal 42 (1999): 315–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Fully 77 percent of the collision cases studied here went to sentence, as opposed to agreement, arbitration or default Judgment, while the share of all cases from the sample years reaching sentence, rather than one of these other outcomes, is only 20 percent. This is probably explained by three features of many collision cases: the relatively high stakes involved, the uncertainty with respect to fault, and therefore the likelihood that the defendant could avoid full damages by contesting the suit.

71. Law and co. v. Samuel (1659), HCA 3/47, fols. 101, 148, 255, 334, 339, 368, 393, 473, 532, 538; 3/48, fols. 161, 176, 190, 212, 435, 587, 602; 13/71, fols. 443, 497, 502 24/112/244, allegation for Lee, 24/113/231, decree.

72. Beake and co. v. Piper (1655), HCA 3/46, fol. 84, the first decree issued nearly two months after the warrant of arrest. Clerke, Francis, Praxis supremae curiae admiralitatis (London: H. Butterworth, 1829), 134–35.Google Scholar

73. Yaxley and co. v. Freeman (1657), HCA 3/48, fol. 302, 3/49, fol. 131.

74. Clarke and co. v. Susan (1661), HCA 3/48, fol. 522; 24/113/158, 24/114/44, 24/114/ 123, Admiralty Judgment that Clarke had failed to prove the libel; DEL 5/17, Delegates' decision reversing the Admiralty ruling; Burrell, 243 (June 1663). The warrant of arrest beginning the case had issued on 5 August 1658. It was three years from the time of the collision, 5 May 1653, before John Hall won £19 in damages, 22 Dec. 1656, and another two years before he received payment from the defendants. Hall v. Accord (1656), HCA 3/ 48, fols. 183, 210; 24/111/189, libel; 24/112/240, decree.

75. Brooks, C. W., Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth: The “Lower Branch” of the Legal Profession in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Brooks finds that early modern chancery costs were substantially higher, frequently in the range of £10 to £15 and sometimes as high as £20.

76. Yaxley and co. v. Freeman (1657), HCA 3/48, fols. 321, 504; 24/113/212, bill of expenses; DEL 5/16, decree.

77. When Sir Leoline Jenkins addressed the Lords in 1670 to defend Admiralty powers, he complained of a case in which the Jurisdictional issue had been raised even after appeal and execution. Captain Rand had successfully sued for his wages at Doctors' Commons in 1668, and the sentence was upheld on appeal to the Delegates. But after paying the award and costs, the defendant Gosling challenged Admiralty Jurisdiction by suit at common law and recovered £80, not from Rand, who “happened to die pending the action,” but from “his poor Relict and Administratrix.” Leoline Jenkins, “Argument in behalf of a bill to ascertain the Jurisdiction of the Admiralty,” in Wynne, William, Life of Sir Leoline Jenkins (London, 1724), 1: lxxxi.Google Scholar

78. Newman and co. v. Rose and Crown (1679), HCA 3/54, fols. 2, 244, 379, 432; 13/31, answers of defendant owners; 13/78, examinations of Andreas Veale, Robert Biffen, Harbert Aylwin, David Lockwood, William Lee, and Samuel Stone; 24/118/42, 24/119/11, 15, 47, allegations; 24/119/153, decree.

79. Jenkins, “Argument in behalf of a bill,” in Wynne, Life of Jenkins, 1: lxxvi–lxxxv. See Prichard and Yale, eds., Hale and Fleetwood, cxx–cxxvii, for an extended commentary on Jenkins's speech.

80. Prichard and Yale, eds., Hale and Fleetwood, xlix–lxxxvii, cxvii–cxx; Bourguignon, Sir William Scott, 26–27.

81. The report of Violet v. Blague, Cro. Jac. 514 (1618), refers to the case of 1604. Dorrington's Case, Moore 916 (1616), involved a collision in the Thames. The Judges in 1607 had questioned the Admiralty's powers to decide whether a Newcastle collier was blocking access to Smart's Key in the Thames. Tomkins c. Gooden (1607), Prichard and Yale, eds., Hale and Fleetwood, 295.

82. Elwill v. Wiggett (1664), in Marsden, Law of Collisions at Sea (1961), 191, n. 17. Martin v. Green, 1 Keble 730 (1664), HCA 24/114/173–74, allegation for Green.

83. Mustard and co. v. Hound (1678), HCA 3/54, fol. 128.

84. HCA 30/1042, 57, 304, 330, 332, 335. It was apparently exceptional that Judge Marriott, Scott's predecessor on the Admiralty bench, aggressively refused in 1798 to dismiss a case involving a collision in the Thames. Bourguignon, Sir William Scott, 100.

85. Marsden and I have found twenty-seven Admiralty collision decrees from the period 1640–59 and nine from 1680–99. For estimates of the increasing numbers of ships arriving at London from foreign ports in the last half of the century, compare Coleman, D. C., The Economy of England, 1450–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 133Google Scholar, with Brian Dietz, “Overseas Trade and Metropolitan Growth,” in The Making of the Metropolis, 128, table 11, and Roseveare, Henry G., “‘The Damned Combination’: The Port of London and the Wharfingers' Cartel of 1695,” London Journal 21 (1996): 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 40.