is in English—'The Soveraignty of the British Seas. Proved by Records, History, and the Municipall Lawes of this Kingdome. Written in the yeare 1633. By that Learned Knight, Sr John Boroughs, Keeper of the Records in the Tower of London.'[1] 'The work, we are told in the words addressed 'To the Reader', was written 'at the request of a great Person'—Charles I, to whom the original work in Latin was dedicated,
'who desir'd to understand the true State of the Question, concerning the Dominion of the British Seas, as well what Histories as our own Records would afford. And here 'tis done in a little roome; for the Author was able to speake fully, and briefly both at once. Some others have written of the same Subject; and if wee thought any spake more, or so much, in so short compasse, wee should forbeare the publication of this. Wee are borne in an Island, and cannot goe out of it, without asking leave of the Sea and Winde; and not to know what Right we have to that Water which divides us from all the World, is something ill becoming such as can read, and may know for reading.'
Boroughs's Latin work was written when the question of the dominion of the British Sea raised a critical problem of a constitutional character touching the royal prerogative. in England, as well as a claim of an international character touching the rights of the Crown abroad. For the latter purpose, at least, its place was deservedly taken by the much
- ↑ London, Printed for Humphrey Moseley, and are to be sold at his Shop at the Princes Armes in St. Pauls Church yard. 1651. The book is 12mo, pp. (x+) 165—about seventy words to the page. It was reprinted—in Gerard de Malynes' Consuetudo vel Lex Mercatoria, or the Antient Law Merchant (1686: a work first published in 1622).
et Municipalibus Regni Legibus per D. Iohannem de Burgo, 1633. The original Latin copy is in the Harleian MSS., 4314, Brit. Mus. See Fulton, p. 365, f.n., where reference is made to a 'fine copy in English', dated 1637, in the State Papers, Dom., ccclxxvi. 68.
