Note 531 — Chapter XII

The whole of these and of the more ancient maritime laws have been recently edited (A.D. 1828-1847) by a learned French lawyer, M. Pardessus. According to his researches, it appears most probable that these documents belong to the ancient French code, called the “Rôles ou Jugemens d’Oleron.” It is impossible to determine now who first compiled them, hence they have been claimed for different nations and tribes; Selden, Coke, Prynne, Godolphin, and others, deemed them of English origin, and due to Richard I., but there is no evidence that he ever went to Oleron. M. Pardessus has shown from the authority of MSS. at Oxford and in the British Museum, and from their coincidence with a very early translation into Spanish, that the first twenty-six articles are the most genuine. The others he considers to be later additions, as, indeed, their intrinsic evidence tends to show. The place of the departure of the ships being generally Bordeaux suggests that they were originally embodied for the coasting trade of the west of France.—Pardessus’ “Collection de lois Maritimes,” Paris, 4to, 1828-47. Sir Harris Nicolas, quoting from Brompton, Hoveden, and others, states that Richard drew up at Chinon, on his way to Marseilles, what he calls “the earliest articles of war.” (“Hist. Roy. Navy,” pp. 89-91.) Still more recently (1871) Sir Travers Twiss, in his edition of “The Black Book of the Admiralty,” has examined very fully the real or supposed claims of Richard to be the author or the editor of the “Rôles d’Oleron.” In doing so he quotes a memorandum of 12 Edw. III. (A.D. 1284), stating that these laws (i.e., the ten last articles of the Rôles) “were by the Lord Richard, formerly king of England, on his return from the Holy Land, corrected, interpreted, and declared, and were published in the island of Oleron, and were named in the French tongue (Gallica lingua) ‘La Ley Olyroun.’”—Introd. pp. lvii.-lviii.