Abstract
Prior to a series of merchant-driven state interventions in the 1570s, the primary institutions of contract enforcement for insurance buyers and sellers in London were the merchant community itself, typically embodied in the city’s Lord Mayor and Aldermen, and the merchants’ own body of governing rules, part of the Law Merchant. In 1781 the underwriter John Weskett published his encyclopaedic Complete digest of theory, laws and practise of insurance, which describes the Law Merchant as follows:1
The affairs of commerce are regulated by a law of their own, called the Law Merchant, or Lex Mercatoria, which all nations agree in and take notice of: and in particular it is held to be a part of the law of England, which decides the causes of merchants by the general rules which obtain in all commercial countries.2
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Notes
Emphasis here and in all citations is in the original. Spelling has been modernised throughout. Weskett, John (Merchant): A complete digest of the theory, laws, and practice of insurance, London: Printed by Frys, Couchman, & Collier, 1781, p. 321.
For a concise history of the development of the Law Merchant, see Benson, Bruce L.: ‘The spontaneous evolution of commercial law’, Southern Economic Journal, vol. 55, no. 3 (1989), pp. 644–61.
The debate over the distinction of the Law Merchant is lengthy. Orthodox opinion among legal historians sees the Law Merchant as a process, rather than a body of law. For this view, see Baker, J.H.: ‘The Law Merchant and the common law before 1700’, Cambridge Law Journal, vol. 38, no. 2 (1979), pp. 295–322.
See also ‘Introduction’, in Basile, M.B., Bestor, J.F., Coquillette, D.R. and Donahue, C. (eds): Lex mercatoria and legal pluralism: a late thirteenth- century treatise and its afterlife, Cambridge, MA: The Ames Foundation of Harvard Law School, 1998.
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Ogilvie, Sheilagh: Institutions and European trade: merchant guilds 1000–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 266.
Sachs, Stephen E.: ‘From St. Ives to cyberspace: the modern distortion of the medieval “Law Merchant”’, American University International Law Review, vol. 21, no. 5 (2006), p. 695.
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Roberts, Simon: ‘The study of dispute: anthropological perspectives’, in Bossy, John (ed.): Disputes and settlements: law and human relations in the west, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 17; Charter quoted in Sacks, David Harris: The widening gate: Bristol and the Atlantic economy, 1450–1700, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, p. 89; Arbitrium redivivum, or, the law of arbitration, by the author of Regula placitandi, London, 1694 (unpaginated).
Hancock, David: Citizens of the world: London merchants and the integration of the British Atlantic community, 1735–1785, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 249; TNA C 3/26/78, petition of John Barnes and forty-seven others, 1566; The special report from the committee appointed to inquire into, and examine the several subscriptions for fisheries, insurances, annuities for lives, and all other projects carried on by subscription … London: House of Commons, printed by Tonson, J., Goodwin, T., Lintot, B., & Taylor, W., 1720, testimony of John Barnard, p. 44.
Ibbetson, D.: ‘Law and custom: Insurance in sixteenth-century England’, Journal of Legal History, vol. 29, no. 3 (2008), p. 293.
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Quoted in Stefani, Giuseppi: Insurance in Venice from the origins to the end of the Serenissima, vol. I, Amoruso, A.D. (trans.), Trieste: Assicurazioni Generali, 1958, p. 104.
For a discussion of the circumstances surrounding Dr Lewis appending to the panel, and the jurisdictional battle between the prerogative, common law, and private courts over jurisdictions in marine insurance disputes, see Ibbetson, Law and custom. Senior, William: Doctors’ Commons and the old Court of Admiralty: a short history of the civilians in England, London: Longmans Green, 1922, pp. 79–80.
Levack, Brian P.: The civil lawyers in England 1601–1641: a political study. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, pp. 73–8, 126.
Steckley, George F.: ‘Merchants and the Admiralty Court during the English revolution’, American Journal of Legal History, vol. 22, no. 2 (1978), p. 143.
Bacon, Francis: ‘Speech on bringing in a bill concerning assurances amongst merchants’ (1601), in Spedding, James (ed.): The letters and life of Francis Bacon, Vol. III, London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer, 1868, pp. 34–5.
Aylmer, G.E.: The King’s servants: the civil service of Charles I, 1625–1642, London: Routledge, 1961, p. 44; Levack, Civil lawyers, p. 126.
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Leonard, A.B. (2016). London 1426–1601: Marine Insurance and the Law Merchant. In: Leonard, A.B. (eds) Marine Insurance. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411389_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137411389_7
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