s
arising to the king from hence; which consist principally in
amercements or fines levied for offences against the forest-laws. But
as few, if any courts of this kind for levying amercements have been
held since 1632, 8 Car. I. and as, from the accounts given of the
proceedings in that court by our histories and law books[s], nobody
would now wish to see them again revived, it is needless (at least in
this place) to pursue this enquiry any farther.

[Footnote s: 1 Jones. 267-298.]

IX. THE profits arising from the king's ordinary courts of justice
make a ninth branch of his revenue. And these consist not only in
fines imposed upon offenders, forfeitures of recognizances, and
amercements levied upon defaulters; but also in certain fees due to
the crown in a variety of legal matters, as, for setting the great
seal to charters, original writs, and other legal proceedings, and for
permitting fines to be levied of lands in order to bar entails, or
otherwise to insure their title. As none of these can be done without
the immediate intervention of the king, by himself or his officers,
the law allows him certain perquisites and profits, as a recompense
for the trouble he undertakes for the public. These, in process of
time, have been almost all granted out to private persons, or else
appropriated to certain particular uses: so that, though our
law-proceedings are still loaded with their payment, very little of
them is now returned into the king's exchequer; for a part of whose
royal maintenance they were originally intended. All future grants of
them however, by the statute 1 Ann. st. 2. c. 7. are to endure for no
longer time than the prince's life who grants them.

X. A TENTH branch of the king's ordinary revenue, said to be grounded
on the consideration of his guarding and protecting the seas from
pirates and robbers, is the right to _royal fish_, which are whale and
sturgeon: and these, when either thrown ashore, or caught near the
coasts, are the property of the king, on account[t] of their superior
excellence. Indeed our ancestors seem to have entertained a very high
notion of the importance of this right; it being the prerogative of
the kings of Denmark and the dukes of Normandy[u]; and from one of
these it was probably derived to our princes. It is expressly claimed
and allowed in the statute _de praerogativa regis_[w]: and the most
antient treatises of law now extant make mention of it[x]; though they
seem to have