PhD Forum briefing note: Geography and trade; Commerce and law

PhD Forum briefing note: Geography and trade; Commerce and law

Editorial history

04/12/12: CSG, created page

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Suggested links

PhD Forum

PhD Forum briefing note: Material culture and language

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Introduction

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Purpose and process of the forum session

The purpose of the forum on geography and trade, and commerce and the law, is for PhD Forum members to explore the potential of HCA materials, as exemplified by HCA 13/71.

Forum members are asked to think how HCA materials might assist them directly in their studies, and more generally how they might assist scholars in exploring issues related to these topics.

The online session, which will take place on XXXX, will be facilitated by Phillip Hnatovich (Pennsylvania State University) and Richard Blakemore (University of Exeter). The role of the facilitator is to structure the session, and to pose a series of questions to forum members. All participating members are encouraged to speak, and at the end of the forum the facilitators will ask each member to make some summary remarks.

Notes will be taken of the meeting and posted to the PhD Forum page after the session. Forum members are encouraged to expand and and correct these notes as they see fit.

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The questions: Geography and trade

(1) What types of geographical knowledge are contained in HCA materials?

(2) What can be learned about trade in and with specific regions?

(3) What data in HCA materials might contribute to a micro-model of English trade in the 1650s?

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The questions: Commercial and legal practice

(1) What can be learned about commercial practices and behaviours from HCA materials?

(2) What can be learned about legal practices and behaviours from HCA materials?

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The dataset

Some preliminary analysis has been done of a subset of the complete HCA 13/71 deposition data, examining signatures and markes used to approve depositions as recorded by the High Court of Admiralty clerks or proctors. The same subdata set can be used to exampine the geographical locations of persons deposing before the court, and to explore some basic patterns of location.

See: Deposition Literacy analysis, 04/12/12

The characteristics of the subset of data are as follows:

Depositions by country of location (alphabetical)

Barbados = 1
Denmark = 2
England = 436
France = 32
Germania = 2
Hansa Ports = 10 (Danzig: 2; Hamburg: 6; Lubeck: 2)
Ireland = 3 (Dublin: 1; Wexford: 1; Londonderry: 1)
New England = 1
Norway = 2
Pommerland = 1
Scotland = 3
United Provinces = 26

TOTAL = 520

Depositions by country of location (rank)

England = 436
France = 32
United Provinces = 26
Hansa Ports = 10 (Danzig: 2; Hamburg: 6; Lubeck: 2)
Scotland = 3
Ireland = 3 (Dublin: 1; Wexford: 1; Londonderry: 1)
Germania = 2
Norway = 2
Pommerland = 1
New England = 1
Barbados = 1

TOTAL = 520

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Depositions of persons located in England (alphabetical)

Bristol = 5
Cornwall = 2
County of Durham = 2
County of Lincoln = 1
County of Southampton = 5
Devon = 11
Dorset = 6
Essex = 11
Hampshire = 2
Isle of Wight = 3
Kent = 17
London = 155
Middlesex = 115
Norfolk = 4
Northumberland = 2
Suffolk = 16
Surrey = 63
Yorkshire = 1

TOTAL = 421

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Depositions of persons located in England (rank & grouping)

London = 155

Middlesex = 115
Surrey = 63
SUB TOTAL = 178

London + Middlesex + Surrey = 333

Kent = 17
Essex = 11
SUB TOTAL = 28

London + Middlesex + Surrey + Kent + Essex = 361

Devon = 11
Dorset = 6
Bristol = 5
Cornwall = 2
SUB TOTAL = 24

County of Southampton = 5
Hampshire = 2
Isle of Wight = 3
SUB TOTAL = 10

Suffolk = 16
Norfolk = 4
SUB TOTAL = 20

County of Durham = 2
Yorkshire = 1
Northumberland = 2
SUB TOTAL = 5

County of Lincoln = 1

TOTAL = 421

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Depositions of Londoners and surrounds

London parishes
- Aldermanburie, London = 2 (2x occupation unspecified)
- Allhallowes Barking, London = 4 (Winecooper; Servant/apprentice to a ship chandler; 2 x Mariner)
- Saint Andrews Wardrobe = 1 (Doctor in physicke)
- Saint Bennett Fimck = 1 (Notary publique)
- Saint Bottolphe without Allgate = 6 (2x Mariner; 2x Merchant taylor; Mariner; Waterman; Cooper)
- Saint Bottolphe Billingsgate, London = 2 (Merchant; Servant/apprentice to Salter)
- Saint Buttolphes without Bishopsgate, London = 2 (Armourer; Servant/apprentice to a Merchant)
- Saint Catherine near the Stocks = 1 (Grocer)
- Saint Dunstans in the East = 1 (Merchant)
- Saint Dunstans in the West = 1 (Mariner)
- Saint Edmonds Lombard Street = 1 (Master Mariner)
- Saint James Rotherhithe = 1 (Barber Chryugeon)
- Saint Katherine near the Tower of London = 4 (4x Mariner)
- Saint Mary Magdalens, London = 1 (Grocer)
- Saint Margaret Fishstreete, London = 1 (Cooper)
- Saint Martin Axe = 1 (Mariner)
- Saint Martin in the Vintry = 1 (Chirugion)
- Saint Mary at Hill, London = 4 (Merchant; Vintner; Salter; Scrivener)
- Saint Mary Colechurch = 1 (Grocer)
- Saint Mary Woolchurch = 1 (Merchant)
- Saint Maudlins Milkstreete = 1 (Secretary to Prize Commission)
- Saint Michael Bassishaw = 1 (Clothworker)
- Saint Michael Cornhill = 2 (Scrivener; Surgeon)
- Saint Michaels Crooked Lane = 1 (Servant/apprentice to fishmonger)
- Saint Nicholas Olaves = 1 (Chirugion)
- Saint Olaves, Southwarke, Surrey = 1 (Lighterman, 2x Waterman)
- Saint Pancras Soperlane, London = 2 (Merchant; Copperas man)
- Saint Stephens Wallbrooke = 1 (Merchant)
- Saint Thomas Apostle = 2 (2x Merchant)
- Saint Thomas Shoreditch = 1 (Mariner)
- Tower Libertie = 2 (Late servant to a compasse maker; Servant/apprentice to a sail maker)

- Saint Mary Matsellon alias Whitechappell, Middlesex = 5 (5x Mariner)
- Stepney, Middlesex = 1 (Mariner)

• Limehouse = 4 (4x Mariner)
• Shadwell = 8 (Anchor smith; 2x Carpenter; Master mariner, 4x Mariner)
• Wapping = 10 (1x Carpenter; Brewers servant; Mariner(Gunner); 3x Marine; Mariner (Cheife Mate); Mariner (Boatswaine); Deale merchant; Labourer)

SUBTOTAL = 22

- Saint Mary Magdalen Bermondsey in Southwarke, Surrey = 15 (XXXX)
- Saint Olave Southwarke, Surrex = 9 (8x Mariner; 1x Brewers clerk)

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Geography and trade

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Types of geographical knowledge

• Different commercial practices of merchants of different nations?

- Those deposed are largely English merchants and mariners

- The best represented non-English deponents in HCA 13/71 are Dutch and French mariners and merchants, though the balance is likely to vary between HCA volumes, partly driven by which nations were at war with whom.

- Some impression can be formed of foreign merchant practices in London, especially those of Portuguese and Spanish merchants, with a surprising number of such deponents, who are less visible in other sources such as hearth tax records, and who are hard to find in Chancery cases. See Portuguese merchants in London and Spanish merchants in London.

- Considerable detail is available on commercial practices in certain ports. In HCA 13/71, for example, there is detail on customs and working practices at the ports of Cyprus and Zant

- Physical descriptions are available for some ports, concentrating on associated navigational difficulties. For example, the problems of the fast flowing waters at Porto. The fifty year old Southwark mariner, James Manfeild, testified that:

"The Port of Porto Port in Portugall is a barrd port, and by reason of the barr and alsoe by reason a great fresh doth usually come downe the Port and the Port is very narrowe and rockie on the one side and sandie on the other, it is very dangerous to put thereinto, and the same is not to bee entered but about three quarters flood, and that with a great fresh gale of winde to stemme the fresh, in soe much that noe shipps (as this deponent hath heard by divers seamen who frequented that Port) doe goe in thither without assistance of a pylott belonging to that place or to some other Port neere thereabout and well acquainted with the sayd Port"

• Making visible the cross-links, rather than hubs and spokes?

- Browsing the Ship List for HCA 13/71 in Google Docs, though only partially complete, highlights a number of cross-links between regional ports, and between unexpected regions and national ports. See Column N of HCA 13/71 Ship List for the routes of specific ships recorded in relevant cases and depositions. Commodities carried by those ships on those routes are specified (if known) in Column M.

- Several textiles related cases show these cross-links. For example, the export of serges from the provincial port of Colchester in the county of Essex to Rotterdam.

- In the case of Newcastle coals, HCA 13/71 reveals that there was a cross-North sea trade in sea coal from Newcastle to Holland, in the ship the Catherine. This was a ship owned by Henry Baldero, William Harris, and John Shephard, and originally purchased in Holland.

- The south-western ports English are well known to have had links with Spain, but it it is interesting to see a planned voyage from Falmouth to Barcelona, then Majorca, and back to Falmouth, converted (with objections by a number of the crew) into a voyage from Falmouth to the West Indies and then to Genoa, before returning to Falmouth. It is also interesting to see triangular trade between south-western English ports, Newfoundland and Spain, with the Plymouth based ship, the wonderfully named Noahs Ark, taking Newfoundland fish to Malaga, but seized by the French before it could return to Plymouth.

- Trading links are also visible between provincial English ports and various French ports. For example, the Lilly of Bristol, trading between Bristol and Marseilles, with an outward cargo of pilchards and stockings. The Prosperous of Southampton appears in a voyage via Falmouth to Bordeaux and back to Southampton.

• Mapping London?

Clearly there is the potential to map the HCA 13/71 data. The data set is large by the standards of many prosopographical historical studies, but still small in terms of statistical rigour. Ideally the HCA 13/71 data set would be combined with additional set sets from other HCA volumes, and indeed data from other sources.

Mapping could be used in an electronic edition as a user friendly means of accessing data, and/or as a tool for hypothesis generation, and/or as a means of demonstrating statistically significant clusters and densities of specific variables in the data.

Simple inspection of the subset of data referred to at the beginning of this briefing note (The dataset) suggests a number of patterns which would be worth exploring. In the case of data for London and its environs:

- High concentration of mariners and shore based suppliers in the parish of Stepney in Middlesex (Limehouse, Wapping, Wapping Wall, Shadwell) and in the parish of Saint Olaves in Southwarke in Surrey)

- Possibly some occupational/social status concentrations of mariners and marine suppliers within specific settlements and parishes in mariner dominated areas

- Some presence of mariners in the eastern and Thames shoreline parishes of the City of London, such as Saint Bottolphe without Allgate, and Allhallowes Barking.

- Scattering of merchants across the City of London, with a slight weighting towards the eastern parishes. However, many merchants giving testimony in HCA 13/71 are identified simply as merchants of London. It is possible that some cross-referencing to hearth tax data for 1666 could suggest the possible parish locations of these merchants. Preliminary linkage work suggests that it may be possible to link a portion of the merchant witnesses to subsequent PRC will and hearth tax data. It would be interesting to compare merchant witness distribution with geographical analyses of London merchants done other scholars.

- There is an opportunity to compare HCA 13/71 occupational distribution of merchants and mariners with distributional data for London, Middlesex, Surrey and Kent hearth tax data for identifiable merchants and mariners and PRC inventory data for identifiable merchants and mariners. For a sampling of these data see the following links. These data were generated for a different purpose, but contain large numbers of merchants, and a reasonable number of mariners, typically ship's captains: Heath tax: Middlesex, Hearth tax: Kent & Surrey, tax: London. For a sampling of PRC inventory data (again generated for a different purpose), see Inventories

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Trade in and with specific geographies

- HCA 13/71 is rich in cases involving the Mediterranean, including the Zant and Morea currant trade, trade with the Turkish port of Scanderoone, trading with the Barbary coast, and trading with Spain (especially the ports of Saint Lucar/Cadiz, Malaga and Barcelona). Genoa is a frequent port of call, and, to a lesser extent (surprisingly), the Tuscan port of Legorno. No individual depositions or cases in HCA 13/71 involving the Mediterranean give a deep geographical insight, but pieced together, and combined with other sources, there is the potential to enrich understanding of trade in certain geographies.

Detail, Carte du bassin méditerranéen, de l'Asie mineure etc., le Brun, 1714

- Using HCA 13/71, the area with the greatest potential in the Mediterranean for such a treatment is probably Zant and the Morea. See commercial context on Zant.

- References to trade with the Barbary Coast (North Africa) are relatively few, but have the value of jolting preconceptions about trading links, and highlight coastal trading and cross Mediterranean trading to add value, as opposed to simple "out and back" trades. The planned route of the Fortune of London demonstrates cross-Mediterranean trading, with Barbary bought goods being traded out in Spain before returning to London. The planned route was from London to Sally on the Barbary coast with "gunnes, or fowling peices, iron, tobaććo lead bales of Cloath and other goods." At Sally "a good part of the Cloath, Lead and Iron was sold, to be payd some in waxe, and some (as he heard) in gold." Then on to Santa Cruz and "there disposed of the sayd gunnes and all the other goods the sayd Tobacco onely excepted." At Santa Cruz, planning to return to Sally to pick up the proceeds of the goods from London, Thomas Braining, the captain "tooke in about forty Jewes and Moores and severall quantities of merchandizes belonging to them, all to be transported to Sally aforesayd upon freight." Uproar amongst the Jews and Moors followed when contrary winds led Braining to put into a different port. Finally, Braining had planned to go then from Sally to Cadiz "to sell some of her Barbary merchandize which she had on board."

- Another geography which stands out in HCA 13/71 (in terms of the number of cases in which it appears) is that of the Canary Islands. There may be some research potential to explore this trade, in combination with other sources, such as the letters of the London merchant John Page. Some detail is available on the practices of Spanish port officials and on commodities shipped out to the Canaries.

- The single geography which stands out in HCA 13/71 as one where the volume offers some really novel insights is that of Greenland. By combining the case of Batson and others con Gosling and others (1656 and 1657) with further cases involving Batson in another HCA volume, a good picture can be built up of the operations and risk taking of an English whaling ship operating in the waters of Spitzbergen. There is the potential to explore the social and economic structure and network of an English whaling ship, using the crew list, and the Court supplied details of a large number of deponents who were on the Owners Adventure and the Greyhound. How far this could be taken remains to be seen. For further information, see C17th Arctic whaling.

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Micro-model of English trade

Could the data generated from the transcription of HCA 13/71 be used in any meaningful way, whether statistically valid or not, to model aspects of English trade in the mid-C17th.

It all depends of course as to what the research question is, but the answer is probably a qualified yes.

At the level of the enterprise, defined as a ship, there is clearly the potential to model aspects of shipping economics, using rules of thumb derived from analysis of the whole HCA 13/71 dataset. The partial data collected in the HCA 13/71 Ship List contains a first shot at gathering and exploring relevant data. Columns F, G, and H capture data, where it exists in HCA 13/71, for ship burthen (in tonnes), deck number, and crew number. These data, when completed, and ideally combined with other HCA data for different years, and compared with data from other sources, could be used to explore crew to burthen ratios, and be input into a bottom-up model of ship economics. Such a model would need to include data and variables for capital costs, operating costs, revenue, and capacity utlisation. See Ship economics for some further exploration of the availability of such data within HCA 13/71.

Why might one want to model ship economics? It is the experience of this author working in modern commercial enterprises that the discipline of a model soon exposes spurious assumptions, and focuses the mind on a few key variables and sensitivities, which have the power to significantly change economic returns.

Thinking through the quantitative impact of (by modern standards) extraordinarily long dwell times at ports to assemble a cargo, and to load it, and then later to unload it, is an interesting exercise. There are a number of cases in HCA 13/71 protesting delays in ships returning, for whatever reason, and claiming damages in terms of additional wages, victualls and ship charter costs. But potent too in terms of delays in arriving at a port and delays in departing from a port is the impact this can have on the ability to make up a cargo or to sell the cargo at a good price when eventually arriving at the intended destination. The case of Ewer against Watts centred on high amounts of dead freight incurred on the home voyage of the ship the William from Virginia to London as the result, allegedly, of Phillip Ewer, the ship's captain, delaying his departure from England long after his previously announced departure. This resulted in tobacco planters by the end of March breaking their commitments to using his ship, and shipping their tobacco out on other ships.

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Resources on geography and trade

Geographies of trade

Bound for Barbary
English coastal trading

Types of trade

Currants and raisins trade
Oranges and lemons trade
Slave trade
Slavery without redemption
Textile trade

Statehood of merchants

Dutch merchants in London and elsewhere
Jewish merchants
Portuguese merchants in London
Spanish merchants in London

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Commercial and legal practice

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Commercial practices and behaviours

HCA documents have considerable research potential for academics interested in establishing the nature of mid-C17th commercial infrastructure and working practices in London and on the Thames estuary, and to a lesser extent in a range of European, Caribbean and and North American ports.

The HCA 13 series is a good series from which to start such looking at shore based infrastructure and working practices, since it contains a fair number of cases involving shore based suppliers to ships, and cases which link specific ladings of commodities to specific wharves and keys. In HCA 13/71, for example, shore based suppliers in London, Middlesex and Surrey include victuallers (brewers, butchers, grocers), anchor smiths, coopers, deale merchants, mast makers, packers, porters, rope merchants, sail makers, ship chandlers, steevedores. watermen, and wharfingers. For examples of the types of insight available for shore trades featured in HCA 13/71 see Port Trades.

Cases provide useful detail on neglected areas of historiography, including Thames docks and wharves, Thames shipyards, and local Thames river traffic involved in loading and unloading larger ships, and transporting goods by river and coastal waters over short distances. Using these data is likely to involve significant work of synthesis, and will require inspection of a broader selection of HCA documentation across years and HCA documentation types, and of totally different series and document types, such as records of involving Chancery, probate, hearth tax, merchant letters, and State papers. See: Thames docks and wharves; Thames lighters; Thames shipyards in 1650s

A slightly different approach which focuses on material handling, independent of whether it involves goods onboard a ship or at a wharf or port, also yields some interesting research material. For example, the descriptions of steeving a ship load of cotton wool at Cyprus by various deponents in a case concerning the Thomas Bonadventure enable a detailed reconstruction of such a process, and emphasise the labour intensity of cargo handling. For an overview of areas of materials handling illuminated in HCA 13/71 see Materials handling.

An interesting research strategy, which could make good use of materials, would be to take a specific commodity and to look at its supply chain from original source through packaging, shipping, unlading, reshipping, reunlading, and transit to wholesaler or retail.

Specific commodities which might be both interesting and possible to explore would be timber, iron, and tobacco.

When the electronic searchable edition of HCA 13/71 is complete, it will be possible to search for all references to specific commodities, and to see which ships specific commodities were carried on, and to which destinations they were sent. Sampling of tobacco related cases in HCA 13/71 shows tobacco being laded at Virginia, but also at the Bermudas, and transported to London, in the King of Poland but also from Virginia directly to the Canary Islands and to Spain. In HCA 13/71 tobacco is also reshipped from London to a variety of locations, including the Canary Islands, Spain and Aleppo. See Virginia tobacco trade in the 1650s

Timber appears in HCA 13/71 typically in the form of deals, spars and balkes being transported from various Baltic ports, such as Berghen and Quinsborough, and bound for London. There are also some references to the import of dye woods from Brazil via English owned ships imployed by the Portuguese Brazil company.

There is the potential to combine HCA material with Chancery, PRC and ADM series sources to map out the acquisition of timber for commercial and naval uses. For example, the detailed 1678 posthumous inventory of Thomas Gaskins' Thames side timber yard, much of the timber being probably of Baltic origin. Or a Chancery suit concerning the non-delivery of timber. The suit was brought by Edward Gavile, a woodmonger of St Clements Danes, Middlesex, against the estate of the deceased Ryder, alleging Ryder's failure to deliver up a parcel of wood which had been contracted for. As with other micro-historical approaches, a combination of determined, insistent, imaginative digital searching plus some luck is required to make connections and build a synthetic picture. But the data, when you find them, are exciting. For example, a Chancery record reveals timber trading merchants desperate to acquire timber in Norway to bring to post-1666 London, devastated by fire.

Iron appears in HCA 13/71 in the form of bars, and processed metal. In HCA 13/71 iron was acquired both in the Baltic region and from Northern Spain. In the case of Spain, iron was acquired at San Sebastians in return for a cargo of corn transported from Southampton in the Seaflower. Iron was transported to Guinney to be exchanged for slaves, as was copper.

HCA material has considerable potential to be used to identify working practices on board ship. Mariner depositions cover all roles and offices on board ship, ranging from "common mariner" or "common seaman" to boatswaine, gunner, master's mate, midshipman, quartermaster through to "master and commander." The working practices most frequently detailed in HCA 13/71 concern materials handling (steeving, hoisting, packing, lading) and dealing with emergencies at sea (reducing sail cover, cutting down masts, pumping the bilges, repairing damaged timbers). There is also some navigational detail, and mention of navigational instrumentation and differing judgements about the best navigational course and the exact location of the ship. See Navigation. A significant sub-group of HCA 13/71 cases concern mishaps of ships when under the direction of a pilot, and provide detail of pilots' responsibilities and pilot conflicts with ships' masters.

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Legal practices and behaviours

HCA materials may offer some insights into legal practices and behaviours.

They appear richest as a source to advance understanding of the use of law and the courts within a commercial dispute, and are relatively free of complex legal issues or legal argument. Richard Blakemore reports that the legal argument of the Court has not been preserved.

Many of the basic legal concepts referred to in the Admiralty Court are commercial rather than marine, such as the law of contract and the validity of record keeping. Other concepts are specific to marine situations, such as bills of lading and charter parties. See Commercial law and Marine law.

The High Court of Admiralty legal process can be discerned within HCA 13/71, but the volume does not contain the complete set of documents relevant to a single case. Interrogatories, if they have survived, as recorded in a separate volume, as are the findings of the court, as are supporting materials which are cited in HCA 13/71 as schedules and annexes. See Introduction to the High Court of Admiralty and High Court of Admiralty process

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Admiralty Court legal practice and process

Overview of court procedure

The High Court of Admiralty appears to have sat both at the abandoned church of St Margaret’s Hill in Southwark, where Samuel Pepys attended a sitting , and at Doctors' Commons, near St Paul’s Cathedral, along with other civil law courts. The court had both a criminal and an 'instance'(civil) jurisdiction: as HCA 13/71 is part of the instance records, that procedure will be explained here, but the criminal branch of the court functioned differently. Using civil law meant that the admiralty court followed a similar procedure to the church courts which, in the early modern period, held jurisdiction over issues like marriage, adultery, and defamation. Historians have written more about these courts than the admiralty court itself.

A lawsuit began when a plaintiff or plaintiffs paid for a citation or indictment, which was intended to make the defendant appear and answer. In the admiralty court suits could be actions in personam (directed against a person or persons) or in rem (directed against a certain ship, goods, or other things), and could be pleaded collectively by a number of plaintiffs against a number of defendants. This was advantageous for mariners as it allowed them to share the costs of a prosecution; the ability to plead in rem also provided security, because it would prevent the defendant sailing off in the ‘attached’ (accused) ship, or ensured that the goods would be used to pay off wages or debts.

If the defendant wished to fight the case, then the plaintiff(s) drew up a libel outlining their ‘cause’, their side of the story. To this the defendant(s) would provide a personal answer, usually denying either the whole libel or certain parts of it: those parts which the defendant(s) denied were recorded as the allegations. Both plaintiff(s) and defendant(s) could then add questions for their opponents’ witnesses, offering a rudimentary form of cross-examination usually attempting to discredit these witnesses (a common question was whether the witness stood to gain from the outcome of the lawsuit). These questions were known as interrogatories.

Both sides then named witnesses who were summoned to court. Witness testimonies were not heard in full court; witnesses were examined before a judge, at least theoretically in private, certainly under oath, and their responses to the allegations and interrogatories were written down by court clerks. It does not seem that these were verbatim: the clerks recorded statements in the third person, and often in formulaic legal phrasing. These depositions were collected over weeks, even months. This was also advantageous for maritime law, as witnesses may have been at sea and so unable to appear personally for some time.

Once all of the depositions were collected, the proctors presented their case before the judge. Both plaintiff(s) and defendant(s) would have been assisted throughout the lawsuit by their proctors, who helped them to prepare their legal documents and appeared in court on their behalf, and with the witnesses. The final stage of lawsuits was the informations, where proctors would argue upon the evidence and points of law but, unfortunately, these were largely unrecorded. The judge would then pass sentence: the admiralty court used summary justice, and there was no jury. Although sentences were recorded, the reasons behind them were not.

Not all lawsuits followed this procedure in a straightforward fashion, sometimes returning to the stages of libels and allegations after initial testimony had been taken. Litigants who lost their case could appeal to the High Court of Delegates, although this was less common for litigants in the admiralty court than in church courts. They might also make use of the rivalry between common and civil law to get a common law court, such as the King’s Bench, to issue a prohibition upon a certain case, on the basis that it fell within common law, not admiralty, jurisdiction. In theory, this should move the case from the admiralty court to a common law court, but as the jurisdiction was debated, it often led to more argument and not to the resolution of a case.

George Steckley has produced a series of detailed articles about the admiralty court. His research has shown that the court’s business expanded rapidly from the 1570s until the early seventeenth century, peaking in the 1630s-50s, and then declining after the Restoration. He calculated that cases involving sailors’ wages lasted, on average, for about three months, while freight cases involving merchants lasted around a year. He also found that an average wage case cost almost £8, around six months’ wages for a 'common' mariner, which makes clear why it was so helpful for plaintiffs to pursue a collective suit. However, only a very small number of cases proceeded to the final stages: in 1657, although the total number of warrants issued by the court was 834, only 52 resulted in decrees of sentence. A further 44 were noted as being settled out of court after some activity in court, and many more must have been resolved through arbitration. This was not unusual for civil law. Christopher Brooks has shown that, from the thirteenth to the twentieth century, less than 10 per cent of lawsuits recorded in civil law courts in England have proceeded to trial before a judge. Litigation in the court, then, was only one of the dispute-resolution strategies available to early modern merchants and mariners, and was used alongside others.

See also High Court of Admiralty process

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Commercial infrastructure

Thames wharves and keys

HCA 13 and other HCA data can be combined with probate data for PRC wills and inventories for individuals identifed as wharfingers, warehousemen, and other trades linked to specific wharves and keys. HCA data can also be linked to A2A searches of county and municipal archives for court cases involving specific wharves and keys, and redevelopment plans and maps for named wharves and keys.

See: Thames docks and wharves

Thames shipyards

HCA 13/71 contains some data on Thames shipyards. See: Thames shipyards in 1650s

One case provides detail of John Pett's Deptford shipyard. More generally there are a good number of depositions by shipwrights, though typically testifying to repairs on specific ships, or of travel on specific ships as crew members, rather than providing contextual detail on dock infrastructure.

It is possible that other volumes in the HCA 13 series will provide more detail on Thames shipyards.

One case in HCA 13/71 provides detail on ship building activity in Normandy. See: XXXX

Frequent mention is made in HCA 13/71 of the purchase by English merchants of foreign ships, frequently of Dutch origin, though typically without details of their building or the specific ship yard from whence they came. See: XXXX

Thames river traffic

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Resources on commerce and law

Commercial infrastructure and associated behaviours

Customs and excise
Materials handling
Thames docks and wharves
Thames lighters
Thames shipyards in 1650s
The Exchange in the City of London
Port trades
Ports

Commercial behaviour

Discipline
Injury and death
Maritime incompetence
Masquerade
Navigation
Privateering and piracy

Commercial economics

Seamens' wages
Seasonality
Ship economics

Law

Commercial law
High Court of Admiralty process
Marine law
Merchants accounts

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