Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/245

 7. SCRUTTON: ROMAN LAW INFLUENCE 231 nected with the history of the Law Merchant, which will form the subject of our next section. From very early times merchants and mariners regulated their dealings by a set of customs and rules known as the Law Merchant, Law Marine, or Customs of the Sea. In the Domesday Book of Ipswich,^ it is recorded that " the pleas yoven to the law maryne, that is to wyte, for straunge marynerys passaunt, and for hem that abydene not but her tyde, shuldene be pleted from tyde to tyde ; " and it is probable that similar courts existed in all seaport towns, and places where merchants resorted. This Law Merchant and Customs of the Sea came into prominence in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean ; lands which had been under Roman rule continued to obey a modified ver- sion of the Roman laws, (which the Roman jurists themselves had borrowed from the Rhodian code,) adapted and altered to meet the new developments of commerce and civilization.^ And by the middle of the thirteenth century a number of written codes of Maritime law came into existence in most of the principal centres of mercantile activity. The Conso- lato del Mare represents the customs observed at Barcelona; the Laws of Oleron, the usages of Bordeaux and the Isle of Oleron ; the Laws of Wisbuy, the rules of the Hanse Towns. The Italian version of the Consolato speaks of its contents thus : ^ " these are the good constitutions and customs which belong to the sea, the which wise men passing through the world have delivered to our ancestors." The early history of the Customs of the Sea, and of the Ad- miralty Court in England may be gathered from a memoran- dum of 1339, entitled " Fasciculus de Superioritate Maris," * which recites that the Justiciaries of the King were to be con- sulted as to the proper mode of revising and continuing the form of proceeding instituted by the King's grandfather and • Pardessus, Collection des Lois Maritimes, Paris, 1828, cited in Twiss, iv. Pref. 129. Godolphin's View of the Admiral's Jurisdiction, London, 1661, p. 13. Zouch, Jurisdiction of the Admiralty of England asserted by R. Zouch, D. C. L., late Judge of the Admiralty Court, p. 88: (writ- ten before 1663, published 1686). Malynes' Lex Mercatoria, p. 87, 1st edit. 1622; 3rd edit. 1685. "Cited in Zouch, p. 88. The original Spanish version (Twiss, iv.), has not the clause. ♦On a roll of 12 Edw. III.; cited in Twiss, i. Pref. pp. 32, 57.
 * Cited from a MS of 1289, in Twiss, Black Book of Admiralty, ii. 23.