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 made a distinction between whale and sturgeon, as was incidentally observed in a former chapter[y]. [Footnote t: Plowd. 315.] [Footnote u: Stiernh. _de jure Sueonum._ _l._ 2. _c._ 8. _Gr. Coustum._ _cap._ 17.] [Footnote w: 17 Edw. II. c. 11.] [Footnote x: Bracton. _l._ 3. _c._ 3. Britton. _c._ 17. Fleta. _l._ 1. _c._ 45 & 46.] [Footnote y: ch. 4. pag. 216.]