The Black Book of the Admiralty

A four-volume set (1871–6) containing medieval codes of maritime law and related materials from England and northern and southern Europe.

For this four-volume set (1871–6), Sir Travers Twiss (1809–97) edited not just the titular Black Book, a late medieval English manuscript associated with the office of the lord high admiral, but also a wide variety of other medieval texts on maritime law drawn from the Atlantic, Mediterranean and Baltic seas.The Black Book of the Admiralty is a late medieval Old French manuscript containing a variety of documents relating to the administrative and legal responsibilities of the office of the lord high admiral, with later additions relating to the court of chivalry and the laws of war. The edition of this manuscript produced by Sir Travers Twiss (1809–97) between 1871 and 1876 filled only part of one of four volumes. The remaining content ranges from the late thirteenth-century borough custumal of Ipswich and other later medieval general custumals from south-west France, to a variety of different codes of maritime law also from south-west France, Catalonia, southern Italy, the Baltic and the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem. Volume 3 contains a further version of the rules of maritime legal custom associated with Oleron, as well as a much longer text of maritime law from a fourteenth-century manuscript written in Catalan and probably compiled in Barcelona.