[Footnote 4: Clerk in the secretary's office. The name of Chicheley Corbin Thacker deserves a comment, for double Christian names were at that period very rare. "In forty-nine church registers out of fifty, throughout the length and breadth of England, there will not be found a single instance of a double Christian name previous to the year 1700." Bardsley, _Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature_, p. 226.] * * * * * _102. Report of Dr. George Bramston. November 27, 1702._[1] [Footnote 1: Public Record Office, Admiralty 1:3666, p. 162. The writer of this report, George Bramston, LL.D., was a notable practitioner of the civil law, and from 1702 to 1710 was master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His uncle writes of him in his autobiography, a few years before this, "George is doctor of law, ... fellow of Trinity Hall, and is admitted at the Commons, and lives there in some practice, but very good repute." _Autobiography of Sir John Bramston_, p. 29. To whom the report was nominally addressed is not clear, but it was intended indirectly for the enlightenment of Prince George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne, whose wifely partiality had in May of this year raised him to the office of Lord High Admiral. As such, he nominally presided over the High Court of Admiralty; finding the need of having its activities supplemented by additional prize courts in the colonies, and instructed by this and similar reports, he on Dec. 7 applied for authority under the great seal to commission colonial governors (vice-admirals) to hold prize courts.] DOCTORS COMMONS,[2] November 27th, 1702. [Footnote 2: Doctors' Commons (see ch. VIII. of _Sketches by Boz_ and ch. XXV. of _David Copperfield_), near St. Paul's, was the headquarters of the doctors of the civil law and of the admiralty and other civil-law courts.] _Sir_, The matter in yours of the 18th instant being of a Nature That was little knowne to Me, It seemed proper to take longer time to consider thereof, than otherwise would have been decent, for the Information of His Royall Highness as to the Power of the Vice-Admiralls of the Forreigne Plantations. I humbly conceive it plaine, That they can have no Authority to condemne Prizes, in their Commissions from the Lord Admirall,[3] for He has none in that Patent which constitutes Him Lord Admirall of England. [Footnote 3: A typical commission of a vice-admiral (Barbados, 1667) may be seen in the _Publications_ of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, II. 187-198.] And you may please to call to mind, that the Power by which Ships are adjudged Prize, Proceeds from a Commission for that purpose particularly granted, under the Great Seale, to his Royall Highness. And as to what may be most proper for the condemning of Prizes in those parts, I humbly conceive it cannot be Regularly done, but by an Authority grounded upon a Commission under the Broad Seale. All which I humbly submitt with the Assurance That I am Sir