The principal of these seem to have
been, the right of the captor to the persons of his prisoners, though in
some cases the king claimed the prerogative of either restoring them to
liberty, or of retaining them himself, at a price much inferior to what
their original possessor had expected. On a similar principle, Henry IV.
forbade the Percies to ransom their prisoners taken at Holmdown. In this
case the captives consisted of the chief Scottish nobility, and the king
in retaining them, had probably views of policy, which looked to objects
far beyond the mere advantage of their ransom. It is mentioned by a
French antiquary that the King of France had the privilege of purchasing
any prisoner from his conqueror, on the payment of 10,000 livres; and
as a confirmation of this, the money paid to Denis de Morbec for his
captive John, King of France, by Edward III. amounted to this exact
sum. The English monarch afterwards extorted the enormous ransom of
three millions of gold crowns, amounting, as it has been calculated,
to L1,500,000. of our present money, from his royal captive. The
French author censures Edward somewhat unjustly for his share in
this transaction; here as in the case of the Percies, state reasons
interfered with private advantages.
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