292 //. FROM THE llOO'S TO THE 1800'S the Consolato del Mare, and the maritime laws of Wisby, became the leading maritime codes of Europe. In fact these codes, " form as it were a continuous chain of maritime law, extending from the easternmost parts of the Baltic sea, through the North sea, and along the coast of the Atlantic to the Straits of Gibraltar, and thence to the furthest eastern shores of the Mediterranean." ^ (b) Commercial law. Similarly in mercantile matters we find that various towns have their codes of customs by which mercantile transactions are governed. As we might expect, the towns which pos- sessed laws dealing with maritime matters were the towns to which some sort of mercantile laws were a necessity. Ole- ron,^ Barcelona,^ and Wisby * all possessed such bodies of law. In England we have the White Book of London,^ the Red Book of Bristol, ® and the Domesday of Ipswich. ' Just as the various seaport towns imitated the customs of some one port, so the various towns modelled their charters and their laws upon certain of the more famous towns in Eng- land, such as London, Bristol, Oxford, or Winchester.^ In the Carta Mercatoria and the Statute of the Staple we get special codes of rules adapted to foreign merchants.^ The body of rules so used by the chief trading towns of Europe is known to the Middle Ages as the Law Merchant. It is, in fact, the private international law of the period. It is clear that both the maritime and the commercial law of the Middle Ages grew up amid similar surroundings, governed the relations of persons engaged in similar pursuits, was enforced in similar tribunals. It is not therefore sur- prising that, from that time to this, the relations between them have always been of the closest.^ ^ Even in England, • Black Book of the Admiralty iv xxvi, xxvii. * Ibid ii 254 seqq. •Ibid iii Ixix-lxxii. *Ibid iv 265, 386. • Munimenta Gildhallae, R. S., vol. iii. •L. Q, R. xvii 246, 'Black Book of the Admiralty ii 16-20T. • For a table illustrating this affiliation of mediaeval boroughs see Gross, The Gild Merchant, i App. E. • Below.
- "At this period they are usually classed together. Select Pleas of
the Admiralty (S. S.) i xix, in 1313 justices to settle piracy claims are to proceed " secundum legem et consuetudinem dicti regni et similiter legem mercatoriam." Ibid xxii, in 1320 a similar direction to arbitrators between England and Flanders in a case of spoil. Ibid xxiv, complaint
