The monarch's right to royal fish was recognized by a statute enacted during the reign of Edward II. According to Henry de Bracton, "de balena vero sufficit ... si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam": "the king owns the head of the whale, the queen owns the tail". In "Moby-Dick", Herman Melville quoted the speculations of jurist William Prynne, that the queen received the tail, in order to be supplied with whalebone for her corsets and stays (although as Melville points out, "whalebone" is in fact baleen, from the "mouths" of certain whales).