Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/441

 declared that, "If the lord of the place be so barbarous as not only to permit such inhuman people, but also to maintain and assist them in such villanies, so that he may have a share in such wrecks, the said lord shall be apprehended, and all his goods confiscated and sold, in order to make restitution to the parties, and himself be fastened to a post or stake in the midst of his own mansion-house, which being fired at the four corners, all shall be burned together; the walls thereof shall be demolished, the stones pulled down, and the place converted into a marketplace for the sale of hogs and swine only, to all posterity."

The frightful severity of this punishment was adopted to stop even greater barbarities inflicted upon wrecked mariners, in addition to the plundering of the ship and cargo. Neither the Gauls nor Britons hesitated to sacrifice strangers cast on their shores; and, unfortunately, the piracies of the Scandinavians and the Normans had the effect of perpetuating this sanguinary custom. Foreigners cast on shore were too frequently immediately despatched, and the right of plundering a wrecked ship extended alike to friend and foe. The execution of pirates, and such as were condemned for crimes committed on the high seas, and their being left to hang in chains by the water side, has survived in practice even to the present century.

Clause twenty-seven relates to the adjustment of losses by any accident resulting from an inferior outfit, and stipulates that when a vessel arrived at