Coastal policing – firmly focused on the idea of ‘prevention’ – was a set of institutions and actors designed to deal with contingencies, that is to say, incidences and potential events beyond the immediate grasp of central authorities, such as smuggling or military invasion. This, however, is not to say that these incidences were not to some extent directly or indirectly influenced by policies implemented by these same authorities. In terms of imperial policies (both within the British archipelago and beyond) and relative to the politics of warfare, many effects materially – though often unintentionally – interfered with regular arrangements of coastal policing. Trade politics and tariff systems directly affected Customs business in the ports of Ireland, Scotland and England. Underneath these fiscal concerns, these policies also impacted on the forms and patterns of Customs activity. Imperial trading routes, the channelling of goods by mercantilist policies, and the micro-logistics of their transport (both lawful and clandestine) and their warehousing affected both the spatial organization and the practical requirements of Customs policing and control in technical and procedural terms. This is also true for the repercussions of wartime arrangements throughout the period. Concerns over coastal defences in particular reordered government priorities vis-à-vis the coast to the disadvantage of the regular peacetime functions and arrangements of the Customs. At the same time, preventive officers became themselves part of the war machinery for the purposes of anti-espionage provisions, the works of the press gangs, or – in the case of the cruisers conscripted by the Admiralty – naval combat.

INTRODUCTION

This case arose in the parish of Bo’ness (Borrowstounness, formerly Kinneil). Much of it concerned healing rituals and prognosis. Janet Drysdale was a magical practitioner, described as a ‘wife’ who ‘could cure’ Janet Barclay's sick child. She used some conventional (if perhaps magical) rituals for this, notably involving south-running water, of which various details were given. She added a further dimension of magical beliefs with the ‘good nightbours’ – the fairies. These fairies were dangerous. Barclay's servant Katherine Currie ritually buried the sick child's shirt as Drysdale instructed, but heard ‘much speaking’ above her head, and afterwards became feverish with fear. Drysdale told another woman that Currie could have been ‘torn to pieces’, and added advice about the ‘blasting’ that had caused the child's illness. However, she said, the ‘speaking’ indicated that the child would recover – which he did.

But someone told the kirk session about the healing of Barclay's child with a ‘charme’ – a term that the church authorities often regarded as designating a superstitious practice or worse. The minister, John Brand, questioned Barclay, who in turn told him about Drysdale. This led to an elaborate enquiry. The minister and elders visited, summoned and questioned various servants and neighbours, and of course Drysdale herself, in order to piece together all the details of the story as thoroughly as they could. Then they referred the case up to the presbytery.

Neither the kirk session nor the presbytery used the word ‘witchcraft’. The one thing that makes Drysdale's case into a ‘witchcraft’ case is the presbytery’s reported recommendation at this point to ‘give her up to the magistrate’, evidently for criminal prosecution that must have been intended to be for witchcraft.

During this same half hour the countess was sitting at a desk at her balcony window, writing a letter to Fessler. She had taken her pen in hand a while ago, but the entrancing view before her caused her to set it back down again. High above the hillsides clad in vineyards and forests, silvery clouds were drifting, while in the valley below, the heat of the day had already settled in, growing more oppressive with every moment. A small pennant that marked the shooting range drooped from its flagpole and only stirred when there was a passing breeze. But suddenly came the sound of a single drum stroke, as if at random, and the countess, thus interrupted in her musings, took up her pen again and wrote:

Dear Friend,

There have been some changes to my existence here since last week, and since yesterday we have been living the high life. Egon Asperg arrived early in the morning and with him young Pejevics, who had been in England for several weeks for the racing, as you may know. I was heartily glad and resolved to spend a pleasant day with them, but would have failed in this, had I not been able to recruit as auxiliaries the two young ladies whom I mentioned to you recently. Two young actresses are naturally more interesting than an aunt of nearly seventy. And now more than ever. For those things which for us constitute life itself seem to have died out in the hearts of the current generation, more comprehensively than in the previous one. My brother treats them with mockery, at least; Count Egon, only with silence and indifference. But I am not accusing, only reporting.

The biblical encounter examined in this chapter takes place in littera, initiated by New Testament allusions, quotations, and exegesis, a rhetorical move that entails a certain conception of historical time unrolled through narrative. From Christian credos to anti-Jewish vitriol, that textual encounter resonates through characters, speech, and plot, and ultimately encompasses the unfinished work as a whole. By his unexpected insertion of religious matter into the territory occupied by the matter of Britain, Chrétien de Troyes effectively reimagines Arthurian romance as he invented it. I will argue that the particular character of Grail romances within the larger field of this most protean genre follows from that incongruous meeting of courtly and Christian discourses, combined for the first time in Le Conte du Graal (c. 1181–91), the last of Chrétien's five romances. The romancer's unsettling inclusion of religious issues within Arthurian narrative occurs during a period when biblical exegesis in both Christian and Jewish traditions takes a new turn, more focused on the Bible's literal and historical sense.

Between 639 and the nineteenth century the Basilica of Saint-Denis was the burial place of forty-three kings and thirty-two queens of France. Cavaillé- Coll's initial proposal was for an organ of eighty-four stops, to be built over three years at a cost of 80,000 francs. Delays in the rebuilding of the cathedral allowed him time to reduce the stops to seventy-one.

The magnificent instrument M. Cavaillé has installed in the Église Saint-Denis has received unanimous approval. Even the maker's rivals are agreed in praising it, and organists can't stifle the regret that such a fine piece of work does emphatically not belong to Paris. It is indeed an admirable organ which combines, together with the finest qualities of the best organs of its kind, others which are unique to itself, thanks to details invented beyond doubt by M. Cavaillé. Its diapasons are very powerful, the reeds very strong and sonorous, and the cor anglais stop has a delightful timbre. There is a slight fault in the sixteen-foot stops in that the pedals are slow to speak. A remarkable new effect is that of the crescendo achieved by a mechanism placed under the feet but above the pedals, and which allows the organist to add as many stops as he likes without taking his hands off the keyboard. This is truly splendid, and you have to hear the build-up of these choruses, these accumulating orchestras, to have a real idea of this invention's merits. The vox humana, which seems to have been made in imitation of that in Fribourg, is far from being as perfect.

One of Valencia's most spectacular and sometimes lucrative periods of literary production spanned the fourteenth to the beginning of the sixteenth century. The burgeoning literary industry was kindled by the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century and the consolidation of the city's professional managers, such as physicians, lawyers, and religious personnel, individuals who were frequently multi-vocational, as in the case of Jaume Roig. The new technology and frequent multi-professionalism of writers at the time were of fundamental importance to the Espill's print history, since the bound text was often accompanied by a select number of other titles in the same volume, several of which were written collaboratively by multi-professional men like Roig. To my knowledge, no scholar has speculated about how many copies of the Espill might have been printed in the sixteenth century, although 54 extant volumes have been catalogued so far. This extraordinary number of printed copies of the Espill has only been widely brought to light in the last two to three decades, thanks to the efforts of the following scholars and academic teams: the monumental article of 2004 by Joan Mahiques Climent about the book's wide availability in print; an important article, although more limited in scope, by Josep Lluís Martos in 2014; Antònia Carré's summary of the topic in the introduction to her edition of 2014; and the ongoing cataloguing efforts over the last two to three decades of the scholarly teams at BITECA / PhiloBiblon and Iberian Books.

The individuals entitled to bounty or prize money were not likely to be able to take their cases to court. It was essential that an agent be appointed to work on the behalf of men still at sea, turned over into another ship, or who had died since the capture. The appointment was probably the captain's decision alone, but every member of the crew had to signify his agreement for this to provide maximum benefit to all. The importance of this legal document can be seen in the meticulous copy made for the use of the court, carefully filed and indexed. These documents do not make clear the status of the individual. That happened later.

• • The identity of the vessel and the date of the document is made clear

• • The identity of the agent and his address is established

• • The prize is named, together with any other vessels involved in the capture

• • The agent is instructed to act on behalf of the captor to receive the bounty or Head Money, sell the prize and everything pertaining to her, before distributing the prize money to the officers and crew

• • The agent is entitled to retain five per cent of the proceeds of the capture

• • This Power of Attorney is dated 7 February 1758

• • A note on the cover of the document adds the information that the prize was condemned on 18 March 1758

• James Henshaw's form contains the same instructions but without the visual effect of the Dispatch's brilliantly decorated legal document.

The court records compiled by William Burrell are indispensable to a researcher into the legal world of naval prizes in the eighteenth century. He provides the barest outline of the cases he quotes, but for each example there is just enough to give a flavour of the legal point at issue, and the justification behind the judgement.

In this case the master of the merchant vessel Pompey, smuggling goods from Monte Christi to Philadelphia, needed to conceal the fact that she was carrying contraband. He had made an agreement with the master of the privateer Charming Sally, to pretend that she had been taken, and was a prize. As a prize the Pompey would normally have been exempt from search by the small British squadron in the West Indies. John Lindsay, Trent (28), was suspicious and took possession of both vessels. He returned to Jamaica with Pompey and declared her his prize for having broken the law.

The law in this case was clear. The Pompey had colluded with the Charming Sally and had pretended to have been captured. The evidence that emerged in the interrogation of the master was damning. Pompey had been provided with a copy of Charming Sally's commission. This however did not protect her, but was the evidence of her collusion.

The monition for John Lindsay's case to be heard in Jamaica was dated 21 December 1761. On 19 March 1762, only three months later, the vessel was confiscated and declared a Droit, with one half of the value of her sale going to the King, the other half to John Lindsay.