In order to appreciate the position of the Admiralty Court at the time when Lord Stowell came to the bench, it is first advisable to make a brief foray into the Court's previous history.

As the name suggests, the High Court of Admiralty was in fact an instrument of the office of Lord High Admiral. The Crown having made a delegation of the Royal Prerogative in maritime affairs to the Admiral, the Court came into existence to deal with offences and disputes within the Admiral's jurisdiction. The Judge of the Court was traditionally styled ‘Deputy’ or ‘Lieutenant’ of the Lord High Admiral, and originally even held his appointment by letters patent from the Admiral rather than from the Crown, though by Stowell's time the reverse was true.

For reasons which ranged from petty jealousy to righteous indignation at real encroachment upon their jurisdiction, the courts of common law very soon became resentful of the power exercised by the civil law Court of Admiralty; as early as the year 1296, the authority of the Admiral to adjudicate disputes involving seizure at sea was denied by the Common Pleas, and in the later decades of the fourteenth century the steady acquisition of Admiralty jurisdiction became intolerable to the common lawyers. Their remedy was to obtain statutory restriction of the Admiral's jurisdiction to ‘a thing done upon the sea’.