Note 1304 — THE COMMONWEALTH 1649-1660

The methods of these gentlemen were sometimes directly ancestral to those of their successors in the prize courts of the beginning of this century. In one case a ship was condemned and its cargo sold, apparently on their own sole authority; the Admiralty Court ordered restitution, and then the Commissioners presented a bill of £2000 for expenses (State Papers, Dom., 26th Feb. 1655). A contemporary wrote, ‘It was nothing for ordinary proctors in the Admiralty to get £4000 or £5000 a year by cozening the state in their prizes till your petitioner by his discovery to the Council of State spoiled their trade for a great part of it,’ (T. Violet, A True Narrative, etc., Lond. 1659, p. 8).