mes, the penalty was death and
dismemberment. All pilots who wrecked their charges for benefit of the
lords of the sea-coast were to be hung on a gibbet, and so exhibited to
all men, near the spot where the vessels they had misdirected were come
on shore. The lord of the foreshore who connived at their acts was to
suffer a dire fate. He was to be burned on a stake at his own
hearthstone, the walls of his mansion to be razed, and the standing
turned to a market-place for barter of swine! Drastic punishment!
Doubtless kingly Richard drew abhorrence for the wrecker from his own
bitter experience on the inhospitable rocky coast of Istria!

Little detail has come down to us of the means adopted to enforce these
just acts. Of the difficulties of their enforcement we may judge a
little from the character of the seamen as presented by contemporary
chronicles. . . .

"_Full many a draught of wyn had he drawe
From Burdeux-ward, whil that the chapman sleep.
Of nyce conscience took he no keep.
If that he foughte, and hadde the heigher hand,
By water he sent hem hoom to every land._"

. . . Thus Chaucer; but Chaucer was a Collector of Customs, and would
possibly assess the stolen draught of Bordeaux as a greater crime than
throwing prisoners overboard! From evidence of the date, Richard's
shipping laws seem to have been but lightly regarded by the lords of the
foreshore. In the reign of King John, wrecking had become a practice so
common that prescriptive rights to the litter of the beaches was
included in manorial charters, despite the Role that . . . "the pieces
of the ship still to belong to the original owners, notwithstanding any
custom to the contrary . . . and any participators of the said wrecks,
whether they be bishops, prelates, or clerks, shall be deposed and
deprived of their benefices, and if lay people they are to incur the
penalties previously recited."

It was surely by more than mere chance the churchmen were thus specially
indicted! Perhaps it was by a temporal as well as a spiritual measure
that Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, strove to remove a
reproach to the Church. He founded a Guild of sea-samaritans, a
Corporation

"of godly disposed men, who, for the actual
suppression of evil disposed persons bringing
ships to destruction by the shewing forth of false
beacons, do bind themselves together in t