This article will concentrate—in case-study form—on a body of littlestudied and unpublished archival documents in the High Court of Admiralty (HCA) papers at the National Archives in London relating to the Elizabethan intelligencer William Herle (d. 1588). The HCA papers reveal the day-to-day workings of the administrative body responsible for the surveillance and legal process of England’s substantial coastline and home waters
