of the various manuscripts containing the ordinance of John is given by Sir Travers Twiss in the Introduction to the _Black Book of the Admiralty_; and through his efforts the original _Black Book_, lost for more than half a century, was found at the bottom of a chest in 1873.[57] Twiss gives the following free translation of the ordinance, made by the Registrar of the Admiralty Court in the reign of James II.:-- ITEM, it was ordained at Hastynges for lawe and custome of the sea in the tyme of Kyng John, in the second yeare of his raigne, by the advice of his temporall lordes, that if the lieutenant of the king or the admirall of the king or his lieutenant in any voyage appointed by Common Counsell of the Kyngdom did at sea meet with any shyps or vessells laden or empty which would not stryke and lower their sailes at the command of the kyng’s lieutenant, or the kyng’s admirall, or his lieutenant, but makeing resistaunce against those of the ffleet, that if they can be taken that they be reputed as enemies, and their shyps, vessells, and goodes, taken and forfeited as goodes of enemies, albeit that the maysters or possessors thereof should afterwards come and alleadge the same ships, vessells, and goodes to be the goodes of friends of our lorde the kyng, and that the company therein be chastized by imprisonment of their bodies for their rebellion at discretion.[58] This ordinance is the last of a series of articles in the third part of the _Black Book_, which contains Admiralty regulations, the Laws of Oleron, and other three ordinances of King John, as well as ordinances which purport to have been made in the reigns of Henry I., Richard I., and Edward I. The facts ascertained by Sir Travers Twiss show that of the six or seven extant manuscripts which contain the ordinance, the oldest was written before 1422 and probably about 1420,[59] and appears to have been drawn up for the use of Sir Thomas Beaufort, the Lord High Admiral. The manuscript used by Selden was probably written between 1430 and 1440; that of the _Black Book_ itself a little later, but still in the reign of Henry VI.[60] The others are not older than the seventeenth century. None of the manuscripts is therefore contemporaneous with the reign of John, but it is clear that the ordinance existed and was ascribed to John in the reign of Henry V., before 1422. Moreover, from intrinsic evidence it is proved that part of the _Black Book_ originated in 1375, in the reign of Edward III., and that the compilation of other parts of it is still earlier. Pardessus,[61] the great authority on ancient marine laws, is of opinion that the part of the _Black Book_ which includes the ordinance of John contains the results of the consultations with the judges in 1338 on the subject of the maritime laws, which were recorded in the roll, still preserved, of 12 Edward III., _De Superioritate Maris_--which also, as we shall see, claimed supremacy for the king