We read of ships having been strengthened and repaired;[1] but the process is not explained. The usual method may still have been to haul them up on the beach, and to deal with them there. Yet already there seem to have been docks (exclusa)[2] at Portsmouth, for, in May, 1212, the Sheriff of Southampton was directed to cause the exclusa at Portsmouth to be enclosed with a strong wall, in the manner which the Archdeacon of Taunton would indicate, for the preservation of the king's ships and galleys; and the sheriff was also to have penthouses set up for their stores and tackle; and this was to be done at once, lest the galleys or their stores should be injured during the ensuing winter.[3]
"Prize-money," as Nicolas observes, "seems to have been as ancient as the English Navy itself."[4] This is, no doubt, due to the fact that the Navy, in its origins, was piratical, and that English fighting seamen, in the earliest times, were accustomed to look for booty in return for their exertions, and would not, indeed, put heart and muscle into the work unless they were promised something more substantial than scars and honours as their reward. When the strongest pirates in the land became first chiefs and then kings, they speedily realised the impossibility of maintaining their position for long at the head of subjects nurtured on robbery and turbulence, unless they compromised many things. By compromising disputes arising out of their forcible seizure of political power, they created, in the course of centuries, the British constitution; and by compromising disputes arising out of their forcible seizure of naval and military power they created, among other things, the system of prize-money—a system whereby piracy is happily hidden under a cloak of legality, and in virtue of which, even to this day, the descendant of pirates, if only he will subject himself to certain forms and rules, may be something of a pirate still, without suffering the disadvantage of being dubbed by so opprobrious a name. But in the days of John, the forms and rules had not been completely systematised. Ships and goods captured from the enemy became the property of the king, and the amount paid to the captors, though already often considerable, depended entirely upon the sovereign's
