A special act of parliament was passed by which receivers of stolen property were made accessories to the theft, but Wild's professed "lost property office" had little difficulty in evading the new law, and became so prosperous that two branch offices were opened.
Such stolen property as could not be returned to the owners with profit was taken abroad in a sloop purchased for this work.
In those days victims of robberies constantly compounded with felonies and paid blackmail to thieves, promising not to prosecute on the restitution of a portion of the stolen property.
From the Conquest or even earlier they had, besides various lesser rights - (1) exemption from tax and tallage; (2) soc and sac, or full cognizance of all criminal and civil cases within their liberties; (3) tol and team, or the right of receiving toll and the right of compelling the person in whose hands stolen property was found to name the person from whom he received it; (4) blodwit and fledwit, or the right to punish shedders of blood and those who were seized in an attempt to escape from justice; (5) pillory and tumbrel; (6) infangentheof and r L outfangentheof, or power to imprison and execute felons; (7) mundbryce (the breaking into or violation of a man's mund or property in order to erect banks or dikes as a defence against the sea); (8) waives and strays, or the right to appropriate lost property or cattle not claimed within a year and a day; (9) the right to seize all flotsam, jetsam, or ligan, or, in other words, whatever of value was cast ashore by the sea; (10) the privilege of being a gild with power to impose taxes for the common weal; and (11) the right of assembling in portmote or parliament at Shepway or Shepway Cross, a few miles west of Hythe (but afterwards at Dover), the parliament being empowered to make by-laws for the Cinque Ports, to regulate the Yarmouth fishery, to hear appeals from the local courts, and to give decision in all cases of treason, sedition, illegal coining or concealment of treasure trove.
To use it on a commercial website would be just as illegal as reselling stolen property.
