Catalogue description Records of the Instance and Prize Courts

The formal separation of the ordinary or instance jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty from its jurisdiction in prize dates from about 1660 when instance and prize causes ceased to be taken in the same court. In the Instance Court proceedings were taken in suits relating to commercial disputes, wages, collision, salvage, etc; the court also dealt with droits of the Admiralty. At an earlier period the instance jurisdiction also embraced criminal cases, such as piracy, but following the Offences at Sea Act 1536 these were reserved for hearing at Admiralty Sessions specially commissioned for the purpose.

The administrative work of both the Instance and Prize courts was undertaken in the Admiralty Registry, under a Registrar, who in addition to his responsibility for the records of the court, also undertook significant judicial duties, such as the examination of witnesses, assessment of damages, taxation of costs, etc. Another important court official, also attached to the Registry, was the Admiralty Marshal, responsible for the execution of warrants for the arrest of ships, the appraisement of ships and cargoes when their value was to be officially ascertained, the sufficiency of persons proposed as sureties when bail was to be given, etc.

The 19th century saw a considerable increase in Admiralty litigation and to provide for this certain county courts were given a limited jurisdiction in such causes subject to a right of appeal to the High Court of Admiralty. Under the Liverpool Admiralty District Registrar Act 1870 a district registry was established in that city and this was extended to the country generally when the jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty passed to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice and district registries were established under the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873.

Appeals from Admiralty instance causes were from the earliest times made to the King in Chancery who appointed judges delegate to hear them. From 1535 this appellate jurisdiction was exercised by the High Court of Delegates. On the abolition of that court in 1833 their jurisdiction passed to the King in Council, and, later in the same year, to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Following the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873 the jurisdiction of the Judicial Committee in appeals in instance causes passed to the Court of Appeal.

The prerogative right of the Crown to grant prize money out of the proceeds of captures at sea was extinguished by the Prize Act 1948. From the Middle Ages such grants to captors of the whole or part of ships or goods seized from enemies had previously been a feature of maritime affairs and examples of the Crown's constitutional right to such captures can be found among the early records of the courts of common law. A more fundamental question was whether a particular capture ranked as 'prize' at all. Such a question sufficiently resembled problems of ownership, etc, arising in cases of piracy or 'spoil' to be referred from time to time by the Crown from the middle of the 14th century to the admiral as the guardian of public and private rights at sea. In this way a jurisdiction in prize came to be stimulated within the embryonic High Court of Admiralty.

This was to develop still further in the following century and by the 16th century, from which date records of the court exist, this prize jurisdiction is clearly seen. It was now coming to be accepted that, generally speaking, a captor could not take legal possession of or sell a captured ship or goods until it or they had been condemned by the court as lawful prize. There were exceptions to this as in the case of letters of marque to owners and crews of private ships, licensing captures from belligerents. But such letters did not extend to the capture of neutral goods or vessels. The validity of captures depended on such questions as whether the capture had taken place on the high seas or in neutral territorial waters and whether the ship or goods were those of an enemy. Although there had been some objection from the common law courts to the prize jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court this was never seriously contested and by the time of the Restoration the court had become the undisputed national prize tribunal.

After the Restoration the prize jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty was formally distinguished from its civil or instance jurisdiction by its exercise in a separate and distinct Prize Court. Both the Instance Court and the Prize Court were, however, served by a common registry and shared officers, notably the Registrar and the Marshal. The nature of the work of the court and the fact that its jurisdiction was intermittent, disappearing in time of peace and reappearing in time of war with all its exigencies, meant there was always some risk of executive interference and this was particularly so during the 17th century. It was the peculiar achievement of Lord Stowell, as judge of the High Court of Admiralty from 1798 to 1828, to establish the court as an authoritative tribunal of prize law, independent of the executive, and delivering judgments based on recognised principles of international law and judicial precedents.

In 1864 a Naval Prize Act was passed codifying the main rules of prize procedure in the High Court of Admiralty and Vice-Admiralty courts. This followed the severance, under the Admiralty Court Act 1859, of the previous exclusive link of the High Court of Admiralty with the civilian lawyers organised in Doctors' Commons. Although some held that it was no longer necessary to follow the previous practice, established at least since 1702, of formally constituting the Prize Court at the beginning of a war by the issue of a commission under the great seal and a warrant from the lords commissioners of the Admiralty, the old procedure was, nevertheless, repeated at the outbreak of the First and Second World Wars.

In 1875 the jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty passed to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice under the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1873. Any doubts concerning prize jurisdiction were later removed by the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1891 which provided that the High Court was empowered to act as a Prize Court in accordance with the meaning of the Naval Prize Act 1864, and that all causes and matters within this jurisdiction were assigned to the Probate, Divorce and Admiralty Division. Subsequently some diminution in the jurisdiction of the Prize Court occurred when a Naval Prize Tribunal was established under the Naval Prize Act 1918, to decide whether a particular prize was a droit of the Admiralty or a droit of the Crown.

Appeals from the Prize Court originally lay to the King and his Council. By the 15th century this jurisdiction had been delegated to special commissioners. Following the establishment of the High Court of Delegates in 1533 to hear appeals in cases civil and maritime a similar body was established to hear appeals in prize causes known as the Commission of Appeals in Prize. In 1833 appellate jurisdiction in prize passed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council under the Judicial Committee Act 1833. This jurisdiction was later confirmed by the Naval Prize Act 1864 and the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1891.