Background

Merchants, shipmasters and shipowners who were involved in overseas trade all wished for protection from piracy and spoilage, for rules for the conduct of maritime business and for assurance that action would be taken against those who did not operate within the law. As discussed in the previous chapter, there were available to them many local courts administering justice in commercial and maritime matters. In Bristol, for example, the city custumal specified that actions ‘between merchants and ships, or between merchants and merchants, or between ships and ships, on land or sea, whether between denizens or aliens … could be heard following the laws and decisions of the town’.

By the end of the thirteenth century, however, the increasing amount of business arising from maritime litigation, its technical difficulties and the nomadic life of the appellants, began to prove too much for the non-specialised courts. A good example of the complications which could arise from the lack of a specialised court may be seen in a 1293 placita in Parliamento concerning the case of Helemes v. Opright in which Jacob Helemes and others claimed that a failure to deliver wine was in breach of the terms of a charter-party made under seal. Walter Opright, master of the ship All Saints, said in his dramatic defence that, having been driven by storm onto the coast near Helford, his ship was looted by men of the sea and all 36 tuns of wine aboard had been taken.