Page:Diplomacy and the Study of International Relations (1919).djvu/141

 The subject had much attention from Alberico Gentili, both in professional practice, when he was an advocate of Spanish claims in English prize courts, and in his posthumous work, Advocationis Hispanicae Libri Duo, in which there is a defence of the claims of sovereignty asserted by English kings over the British seas; and the arguments are noteworthy as coming from a learned Italian, Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, and the supplanter of Grotius as the reputed Founder of International Law. But there are three writers, British by birth, whose works make a special appeal to students of contemporary British thought on this subject. One of them is a Scotsman, and two are Englishmen.

As early as 1590 William Welwod published The Sea-Law of Scotland—a book now extremely rare. To this work there