versities) notwithstanding any statute, custom, or
charter to the contrary. And soldiers in actual military service may
make their wills, and dispose of their goods, wages, and other
personal chattels, without those forms, solemnities, and expenses,
which the law requires in other cases[a]. Our law does not indeed
extend this privilege so far as the civil law; which carried it to an
extreme that borders upon the ridiculous. For if a soldier, in the
article of death, wrote any thing in bloody letters on his shield, or
in the dust of the field with his sword, it was a very good military
testament[b]. And thus much for the military state, as acknowleged by
the laws of England.

[Footnote a: Stat. 29 Car. II. c. 3. 5 W. III. c. 21. Sec. 6.]

[Footnote b: _Si milites quid in clypeo literis sanguine suo
rutilantibus adnotaverint, aut in pulvere inscripserint gladio suo,
ipso tempore quo, in praelio, vitae sortem derelinquunt, hujusmodi
voluntatem stabilem esse oportet._ _Cod._ 6. 21. 15.]

THE _maritime_ state is nearly related to the former; though much more
agreeable to the principles of our free constitution. The royal navy
of England hath ever been it's greatest defence and ornament: it is
it's antient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island;
an army, from which, however strong and powerful, no danger can ever
be apprehended to liberty: and accordingly it has been assiduously
cultivated, even from the earliest ages. To so much perfection was our
naval reputation arrived in the twelfth century, that the code of
maritime laws, which are called the laws of Oleron, and are received
by all nations in Europe as the ground and substruction of all their
marine constitutions, was confessedly compiled by our king Richard the
first, at the isle of Oleron on the coast of France, then part of the
possessions of the crown of England[c]. And yet, so vastly inferior
were our ancestors in this point to the present age, that even in the
maritime reign of queen Elizabeth, sir Edward Coke[d] thinks it matter
of boast, that the royal navy of England then consisted of _three and
thirty_ ships. The present condition of our marine is in great measure
owing to the salutary provisions of the statutes, called the
navigation-acts; whereby the constant increase of English shipping and
seamen was not only encouraged, but rendered unavoidably necessary. By
the statute 5 Ric. II. c. 3. in order to augment the navy of England,
then gr