Note 889 — Chapter XIII · CHARLES II.—continued. THE THIRD DUTCH WAR.

Pontalis, op. cit., ii. 130, 134. Hume, op. cit., cap. xlv. Sir William Temple to his brother, 23rd May 1672. Works, iii. 505. Clarendon’s Memoirs, ii. 289. England’s Appeal, p. 22. State Papers, Entry Book, 24, fol. 54. Ibid., Dom., 1671, ccxciv. 127; 1672, cccii. 55, 112, 233; ccciii. 206. Entry Book, 34, f. 147. It was in connection with the offers of the Dutch on this occasion or a little later in the year that Sir Leoline Jenkins made the following pronouncement as to the king’s rights to the dominion of the seas. He was asked by Secretary Coventry “what his Majesty, his heirs and successors, Kings of England, may reasonably pretend to be signified by these words, en la pleine et entiere joüissance du droit de pavillon”? Jenkins replied (1) that the King of England for the time being was Lord of these seas, where he had the right of his flag acknowledged, and that these seas were, as much as that watery element is capable of being so in its nature, no less a domain of the Crown than the Honour of Greenwich or the Manor of Eltham; (2) that the droits souveraines of the king in his seas against strangers had all the legal requisites of a prescription beyond the memory of man, and did not consist in one individual point, as for instance in having the flag struck to, or in having the liberty of fishing acknowledged by yearly sums of money; but in all the several rights, honours, and perquisites that a sovereignty is capable of producing, and have been enjoyed by former kings of England, with this difference from all seigneuries that move from a mesne Lord, or Lord Paramount, that our kings hold this as they do their crown, from God alone, and by their sword. Life, ii. 697.