540
REIGN OF EDWARD THE SIXTH.
[ch. 27.
not be allowed to lie over. In the anomalous character of the war, during its earlier stages, merchant ships had been taken on both sides by privateers, and it was uncertain whether they were lawful prizes. The French desired that a joint commission should sit to settle all maritime claims. The English council said that they had no power by law to consent to such a commission; their own Admiralty Court had been constituted for the express purpose of dealing with maritime questions, and dealing with them by the civil law of Europe, not by the common law of England. The complaints of French merchants against English cruisers must be heard there or nowhere.[1]
- ↑ 'As concerning the commissions, answer has been made that in all the Parliaments and generally in the courts of France where law is ministered, though some places have their particular customs, the law civil is observed, kept, and practised, and so it is likewise in the great courts of Brabant, Flanders, and Malines. So that it is easy enough, either for the French King or the Emperor, to appoint persons in any of the said courts or Parliaments to hear any cause that the princes shall think good to appoint and commit unto them. But throughout all this realm of England, in all the courts of justice, are observed the laws of the realm, and all causes and controversies judged by the same, so as no other laws have place—which laws of the realm are not the civil laws, nor are grounded upon them, nor have no conformity unto them, so as the knowledge of the civil law serveth nothing at all for the understanding or exercising of them. Wherefore the King's Highness can appoint none out of his ordinary courts of this realm to hear any kind of causes unless the said causes be judged and determined by the laws of the realm, and not the civil law. And we think the French King's subjects, being ignorant of the said laws of the realm, would not gladly have their causes and matters judged thereby.… Thus it is that forasmuch as strangers are not acquainted with our laws, to shew them favour, the King's Highness's progenitors have thought good to erect and set up a court of matters chanced upon the seas or out of this realm; in the which court process is made and justice is minis-
