[A] For the freedom of the seas and the relation of Grotius to the doctrine, see Ernest Nys’s Les Origines du Droit International (1894), pp. 379-387, and the same author’s Etudes de Droit International et de Droit Politique, 2e série (1901), Une Bataille de Livres, pp. 260-272. For an account in English see Walker’s History of the Law of Nations, Vol. I (1899), pp. 278-283.
For an interesting sketch of the illustrious author of the Mare Liberum, see Motley’s The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Vol. II, Chap. XXII; for an analysis of Grotius’ views on the law of nations, see Hallam’s Introduction to the Literature of Europe (4th edition), Vol. II, Part III, Chap. IV, Sec. III; for an account of Grotius as a humanist, see Sandys’ History of Classical Scholarship (1908), Vol. II, pp. 315-319.
[B] Hugonis Grotii De Jure Praedae, edited, with an introduction, by H. G. Hamaker, and published at The Hague in 1868 by Martinus Nijhoff.
[C] In support of the view that Grotius appeared as counsel in cases arising out of captures made by vessels in the service of the Dutch East India Company, and that the treatise, De Jure Praedae, is a legal brief, see R. Fruin’s Een Onuitgegeven Werk van Hugo De Groot in Verspreide Geschriften, Vol. III, pp. 367-445. The following passages are quoted from this remarkable essay:
“While busy with the sale of the goods [of the captured merchantman Catherine, which had been unloaded in the Amsterdam arsenal], the process of adjudicating the booty before the admiralty court was conducted in the usual forms. Claimants: Advocate General of Holland, the Board of eight Aldermen, and Admiral Heemskerck; ... on Thursday, September 9, 1604, final sentence was rendered, and ‘the merchantman together with the goods taken from it were declared forfeited and confiscated’” (pp. 389-390).
“Hulsius in some measure replaces what the fire at the Marine Arsenal has robbed us of; among other records he has preserved for us in his Achte Schiffart the sentence pronounced in this matter by the admiralty, and of which we have knowledge from no other sources. From it we learn the grounds upon which the claimants demanded the adjudication of the booty. These grounds are the same twelve which De Groot discusses in his book.... This concordance can be explained on the ground that De Groot must have had acquaintance with the sentence; but he was not a man merely to repeat what others had before him witnessed. I should be inclined to feel that in the process he had served as counsel for the Company, and that he himself was one of the authors of the written claim upon which the sentence was based. It would not then be surprising if in his book he should develop at greater length and throw light upon what had already been set forth in the claim” (pp. 390-391).
“I cannot state definitely that Hugo De Groot was persuaded by the Directors to write such an argument; I have been unable to discover any evidence to that end. That he was in close relations with the Company, he himself says in a letter of later date, addressed to his brother. Nor can there be any doubt that in writing his work he made use of the archives of the United Company and of its predecessor. If the supposition, which I have elsewhere ventured to make is correct, that is to say, that in the conduct of the case he appeared as advocate for the Company, it would then appear most probable that, after consultation with the directors, he set about writing his book, which was to be a second plea in their behalf” (p. 403).
[D] For the account which Grotius himself gives of the incident, see his Annales et Historiae de Rebus Belgicis ab Obitu Philippi Regis usque ad Inducias Anni 1609, written in 1612, but first published in 1658, Book 1, p. 429.
For a fuller account of the circumstances under which the treatise on the law of prize was written, see Hamaker’s edition of the De Jure Praedae, pp. vii-viii. The distinguished historian and scholar, Robert J. Fruin, after an exhaustive examination of the evidence, informed Hamaker that Grotius was retained by the Company to prepare the commentary on the law of prize. The English translation of Hamaker’s exact statement reads as follows: “Fruin is of the opinion that he [Grotius] undertook this work at the instance of the Company, and that he appeared in it as their spokesman.”
For an analysis of the commentary De Jure Praedae and the circumstances under which it was written, see Jules Basdevant’s study on Grotius, pp. 131-137, 155-179, in Pillet’s Les Fondateurs du Droit International (1904).
[E] Selden’s Mare Clausum was not the only defense of England, nor was the Mare Liberum the only lance which Grotius broke for the freedom of the seas. In 1613 William Welwod, professor of Civil Law at the University of Aberdeen, published a little book entitled An Abridgement of all the Sea-Lawes, in which he maintained the English side of the question, of which Title XXVII, pp. 61-72, deals with the community and property of the seas. Two years later Welwod published a second work, this time in Latin, entitled De Dominio Maris Juribusque ad Dominium praecipue Spectantibus Assertia Brevis ac Methodica.
Grotius prepared, but did not publish, a reply to Welwod’s first attack, entitled Defensio Capitis Quinti Maris Liberi Oppugnati a Gulielmo Welwodo Juris Civilis Professore, Capite XXVII ejus Libri Scripti Anglica Sermone cui Titulum Fecit Compendium Legum Maritimarum. It was discovered at the same time as the commentary De Jure Praedae and was published in 1872 in Muller’s Mare Clausum, Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis der rivaliteit van Engeland en Nederland in de zeventiende eeuw.