B. The Narrow Seas.
The expression 'the Narrow Sea', or 'the Narrow Seas', which so often appears in seventeenth-century diplomatic dispatches and controversial writings, is a term upon whose exact signification geographically there has been much dispute. The English kings from ancient times claimed 'sovereignty'—dominium maris—in the 'narrow seas' or mare britannicum. Evidence is fairly conclusive that the term under the Tudors and until the friction with the Dutch arose on the questions of free fishery and the striking of the flag in the reign of James I, was confined to the Channel, the narrow sea between England and France. Lord Salisbury, as late as 1609, writing to Sir R. Winwood at the Hague (Winwood, Mem. iii, p. 50), speaks of 'his Majesty's narrow seas between England and France, where the whole appertayneth to him in right, and hath been possessed tyme out of mind by his progenitors.' It soon, however, became the accepted interpretation of English statesmen, jurists, and writers that the 'narrow seas' meant the two seas between England and France, and England and the Netherlands; thus Rapin (Hist. d'Angleterre vii, p. 454), 'la domination des deux Mers, c'est-à-dire, des deux bras de Mer qui se trouvent entre l'Angleterre et la France et entre l'Allemagne et la Grande-Bretagne.' This extension of the term was vigorously contested by the Dutch. In the peace negotiations at Cologne in 1673 the Dutch protested that no treaty between England and any other power 'n'ait meslé la Mer Britannique avec celle du septentrion' (Verbaal der Amb. 1673/74). The English popular view of the question appears clearly in an anonymous pamphlet, The Dutch Drawn to the Life, published in 1664, just before the outbreak of the Second Dutch War. The writer speaks of 'the command of the Narrow Sea, the Dutch coast and ours' (p. 53); and again, referring to the action taken by King Charles I in 1640 (p. 148), 'When our neighbours the Dutchmen minded their interest and were almost Masters at Sea in the Northern Fishing ... upon our Fishmongers' complaint the King encouraged several overtures and projects concerning Busses for our own Coasts service, the prevention of strangers, and the improvement of the Narrow Seas, &c.'