to think but that he always
lived a well ordered life, having never heard to the Contrary.

And further Saith not.

JNO. GILBERT.

PRIZE COURTS.

_116. Sir Henry Penrice to the Secretary of the Admiralty. November
29, 1718._[1]

[Footnote 1: Public Record Office, Admiralty 1:3669. This letter was
apparently addressed to the secretary of the Admiralty, Josiah
Burchett. Sir Henry Penrice was judge of the High Court of Admiralty
from 1715 to 1751.]

_Sir_,

Since I had the Honour of your letter I have looked into the Registers
Office,[2] and there find Copies of the Orders of Council, of
Commissions for granting Letters of Mart, of Commissions for
proceeding in Prize Courts, and of Warrants to the Judge of the High
Court of Admiralty thereupon, in the years 1664, 1672, 1689 and
1702,[3] of which if you please you may have Copies if they will be of
any service in the present Case.

[Footnote 2: The office of the register of the Admiralty.]

[Footnote 3: At the beginnings, respectively, of the Second Dutch War,
the Third Dutch War, and the wars of William and of Anne against
France.]

Now as to the Question proposed whether there is Occasion for any
further power, to the severall Courts of Admiralty in the plantations,
other Remote parts, or at home, to Try and Condemn such Prizes as may
be Taken?

As far as I have observed during the course of the Wars with Holland,
France and Spain, the High Court of Admiralty have proceeded in all
Prize causes, by Virtue of Warrants from the Lord High Admiral or
Commissioners for Executing that Office, in pursuance of Commissions
under the Great Seal directed to them for that purpose;[4] and
Commissioners were appointed at the severall Plantations to take the
Examinations of Witnesses in preparatory and to transmit them hither,
together with the Ships papers, and in case the ship and Goods were
perishable they had a Power to Appraise and sell, and keep the produce
in their hands, till after Sentence, that the Merchants might have
time, and be at a Certainty, where to enter their Claims.

[Footnote 4: Such a commission (1748) is printed in Marsden, _Law and
Custom of the Sea_, II. 297, and (1756) in Stokes, _View of the
Constitution of the American Colonies_, p. 278.]

But after the American Act, the Vice-Admiralty Courts in the
Plantations, by Authority thereof,[5] proceeded in Prize Causes, which
I conceive they had no right to do before; and that power being d