Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/335

 9. HOLDSWORTH: THE LAW MERCHANT 321 moulding and reducing to form the principles and practice of theif Court." ^ These statements would n'ot have been made by the judges of the Court in the 16th, or even in the 17th centuries. The contact with, and the control exercised by the Courts of Common Law, have effected in a similar way both the civil and the criminal jurisdiction of the court. (c) Admiralty Droits. The crown had originally certain rights to property found upon the sea, or stranded upon the shore. ^ The chief kinds of property to which the crown was thus entitled were, great fish (such as whales or porpoises),^ deodands,* wreck of the sea, flotsam, jetsam, and lagon,^ ships or goods of the enemy found in English ports, or captured by uncommissioned ves- sels, and goods taken or retaken from pirates. ^ In early days, before the rise of the court of Admiralty, many of these droits were granted to the lords of manors, or to the towns which possessed Admiralty jurisdiction. Yar- mouth had such rights.'^ In 1829 Dunwich and Southwold spent £1000 to determine the question whether a puncheon of whiskey, taken up in the sea, was within the jurisdiction of one town or the other. ^ The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and the Ports themselves shared these droits between them. ^ In 1836 there was litigation between the crown, and the owner of the manor and castle of Corfe and the Isle of » The Gas Float Whitton, No. 2, L. R. 1896, P. at pp. 47, 48. • Stat. Praerogativa Regis (IT Ed. II. St. 1 c. xi). On the whole subject see L. Q. R. xv 353. » Lord Warden of Cinque Ports v. The King (1831) 2 Hagg. Adm. 438. Holmes, Common Law 24-26; Select Pleas of the Admiralty ii xxvi, xxvii. They were abolished 9, 10 Vict. c. 62. only which are cast or left on the land by the sea. . . . Flotsam is when a ship is sunk or otherwise perished and the goods float on the sea. Jetsam is when the ship is in danger of being sunk, and to lighten the ship the goods are cast into the sea, and afterwards, notwithstanding, the ship perish. Lagan (vel potius Ligan) is where the goods which are so cast into the sea, and afterwards the ship perishes, and such goods are so heavy that they sink to the bottom, and the mariners, to the intent to have them again, tie to them a buoy or cork. . . and none of these goods are called wrecks so long as they remain in or upon the sea," Sir Henry Constable's case (1601) 5 Co. Rep. 106. • Select Pleas of the Admiralty ii xxxix. 'Ibidxxii. Mbid. "Ibid xxiii.
 * I. e. a thing causing the death of a man, Stephen, H. C. L. iii 77, 78;
 * " That nothing shall be said to be wreccum maris but such goods