Catalogue description High Court of Admiralty: Black Book of the Admiralty

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Details of HCA 12
Reference: HCA 12
Title: High Court of Admiralty: Black Book of the Admiralty
Description:

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.
Date: c1450
Related material:

A return to the Society of Advocates concerning the contents of the book is in HCA 30/1044
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

High Court of Admiralty, 1340-1875
Physical description: 1 volume(s)
Restrictions on use: Permission is needed to view the original.
Publication note:

An edition of the text is available in T Twiss, The Black Book of the Admiralty (Rolls Series, 55, 1871-1876), 4 vols.
Administrative / biographical background:

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'. It remained missing until the early 1870s.

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