[Footnote 1:  The “ancient” customs were on wool, woolfels and leather; all other were “evil” customs.  Holt, afterward C.J., in “The Great Case of Monopolies.”]

There is another interesting clause in this statute; I don’t know whether in this country so much as there, but it is in England the almost universal custom of ships to have a dog or cat on board.  You never will find a coasting vessel without a dog or cat, usually both; and I believe it is for this strange historical reason, as shown in this Statute of Westminster I:  In those days all wrecks belonged to the king. (Pretty much everything, in fact, did belong to the king, except the land that was held by book or charter, or such personal property as a man had in his own house—­all mines, all franchises, all monopolies, even all whales and sturgeons that were thrown up on the beach—­the head to the king and the tail to the queen.) So all wrecks belonged to the king.  The result was, that whenever any vessel went ashore the king’s officers seized it; and naturally the owner of the vessel didn’t like that, because it very often happened that the vessel was perfectly good and could be easily repaired and the cargo saved.  It is still a great principle in marine law that if one-half of the cargo is good, the man who owns the vessel cannot surrender and claim from the insurance company as a total loss; it is important still how much of a wreck a wreck is.  But in those days the king, even if the vessel was stranded and could be raised, would seize it on the plea it was a wreck.  The man who owned the ship would say she is perfectly seaworthy; and then would come the dispute as to what a wreck was.  Or even when the vessel was destroyed, a great part of the cargo might be saved, and the owner of the vessel thought it very unjust that the king should claim it all.  So the Parliament of England established as part of the liberties of the English merchant or trader that he should still have a property in his wreck; and then the question came up as to what was a wreck.  It was generally admitted that when all hands were lost, that was a wreck; but they wanted to get as narrow a definition as they could, so they got Parliament to establish this law, that in future nothing shall be considered a wreck out of which a cat or a dog escapes alive; and from that time until the present day no vessel coasts about England without carrying a cat or dog.

But the great achievements of legislation up to 1300 remain the re-establishment of English law, as shown in the great charters of John, Henry III, and the confirmation of Edward I. And Magna Charta had to be read once a year (like our Declaration of Independence), and for breach of it a king might be excommunicated; and Henry III himself, according to Cobbet, feared that the Archbishop of Canterbury was about to do so.

IV

EARLY LABOR LEGISLATION, AND LAWS AGAINST TRUSTS