Thus, long before any decree with regard to marine insurance was issued by a Government of England, the practice of insurance was common and regular in the country. The first British Marine Insurance Act bears the date of 1601, and states in its Preamble that Marine Insurance has been “tyme out of mynde an usuage amongste merchantes, both of this realme and of forraine nacyons.” It mentions, in fact, “an Office of Insurance within the City of London,” where a registry of marine insurance policies was compiled. This Act of Queen Elizabeth established a permanent commission for the hearing of cases arising out of policies of marine insurance. The Commission was to sit for the time being under the presidency of the Judge of the Admiralty and the Recorder of London. It was to consist of two members of Civil Law, two common lawyers and eight grave and discreet merchants, and was to hold its Sessions once a week. The Act, however, found no favour with the Merchants of the City of London, chiefly, no doubt, because it allowed appeals to the Court of Chancery, which in the slowness of its procedure seems in those days not to have lagged behind the Court of Chancery, as Dickens found it in the days of “Jarndyce versus Jarndyce.” The Act accordingly fell, after a generation, into disuse. But the practice of assurance steadily increased and, with the coming of Lloyds and the granting of the Charters to the two great Corporations--the Royal Exchange Assurance and the London Assurance--was gradually placed upon a legal and scientific basis.