Black Book Of The Admiralty
(Liber Niger
Admiralitatis,)
Vol. 1

The
Liber Niger
Admiralitatis, or
Black
Book of
the
Admiralty, is an
illuminated manual of
instruction
for the Lord High
Admiral. It
contains details on the
appointment
and office
of admiral,
the conduct of cases in
the High
Court of Admiralty, and
a
section on the
examination and
punishment of
offenders,
and
includes the
Laws
of Oléron, a
code
of maritime law
thought to have been
compiled in the
thirteenth
century
under English
royal
authority,
initially to govern
the Gascon
trade
which passed
by the
island of
Oléron,
off
the
west coast of
France.
Little is known about the circumstances of the book's
compilation, or its early history. The book was consulted
at the Admiralty
registry by naval
historians in the
seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries,
but by
1808 it
had
been lost and the
registry
clerk
claimed that the registry 'had
never
seen
such a book, and knew nothing of it'.
(UK National Archives, HCA 12/1)
There are
several
mentions
made of
it in
1847,
in
Nicholas Harris', A
History
of
the
Royal Navy: From the
Earliest
Times to the Wars of the
French
Revolution
. He
states, that
in "Prynne's
Animadversions
p.108 who
cites
the
Black
Book of the Admiralty"
and that it is a "genuine
Treatise on the Dominion of the Sea and a
compleat body of
the Sea
Laws". Harris attributes it's origins to
"have
been made by Richard the First
about the beginning
of
his
reign
by
the
advice of many lords of
the
realm at
Grimsby in Lincolnshire If the admiral by
the King's
command arrested any
ships for the King's service and he or his
lieutenant
certified the arrest or
returned a list of the
ships
arrested into
Chancery neither
the
master nor
owner
of the said
vessels should
plead
against
the return that
the admiral
and his
lieutenant are
of record.
And if any vessel
broke the
arrest
and the master or
owner were
indicted and
convicted
by
a
jury
the
ship
should be
confiscated to the
King
The
most memorable of
King
Richard's
marine laws was
however
the code
known to all jurists as the
'Laws of
Oleron',
though this
code
is ascribed to
Richard, a great
part
of it had
been
enacted by his mother
Queen
Eleanor under
the title of the
Roll
of
Oleron and it is
singular to that precise date. The book
seems
to have
been
missing until the
early 1870s.
An edition
of the
text
is appeared
in T.
Twiss, The
Black
Book of the Admiralty (Rolls
Series, 55,
1871-1876). This
was transcribed between 1871 and 1876 by
Sir
Travers
Twiss. The Black Book
was
thought at the time to
be lost,
and
Twiss
worked from related manuscripts and
transcripts. Of the four volumes of Twiss'
work only
the first and fourth
relate to the Black Book. Vol. I pp. 1-344
contains the
transcripts, and Vol.
IV contains minor
corrections made
after the
original was found.
The
rest
are
appendices and
important notes and
documentation on
the
manuscripts.The
languages
used can
be
dual
text (pages side
by side) in
Old
French and
contemporary English,
Latin
alone, French
alone or
English alone.