The Sovereignty of the Sea / An Historical Account of the Claims of England to the Dominion of the British Seas, and of the Evolution of the Territorial Waters

by Thomas Wemyss Fulton

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The possession by Venice of this maritime sovereignty was symbolised each year for many centuries by the picturesque ceremony of “espousing” the Adriatic. On Ascension Day the Doge was rowed to the strains of music in a magnificent gilded state barge, the Bucentaur, to the channel of Lido, where he cast a ring into the water, exclaiming as he did so, “We espouse thee, O Sea, in sign of a real and perpetual dominion” (“Desponsamus te mare in signum veri perpetuique dominii”). The Papal nuncio and representatives of other states assisted at the ceremony.

[2] Twiss, The Law of Nations in Time of War, 142. Maine, International Law, 76.

[3] Twiss, op. cit., 143, 144. Reddie, Maritime International Law, i. 41.

[4] Nicolas, Hist. Navy, i. 157.

[5] “Il sera banny hors dAngleterre et de mer appartenant au roi dAngleterre,” Article in Black Book, i. 58, ascribed to the reign of Henry I. (A.D. 1100-1135); “Ad piscandum in mari nostro, prope Jernemuth,” Edward I., A.D. 1295, Fœdera, ii. 688; “la meer Dengleterre,” A.D. 1306, Chanc. Rolls, Misc. Treaties, &c., Bd. 14, No. 15; “super mare Anglicanum” (Rot. Pat., 14 Edw. II., pt. ii. m. 26, d.), A.D. 1320, &c., &c.; “partibus maris infra regnum nostrum Angliæ,” A.D. 1317, Edw. II., Fœdera, iii. 469; A.D. 1406, Hen. IV., giving freedom of fishing, “ubicumque supra mare, per et infra dominia, jurisdictiones, et districtus nostra”; “Seigneur de la mer,” A.D. 1320, Fœdera, iii. 852; “reges Angliæ domini maris Anglicani circumquaque,” A.D. 1336, Rot. Scot., i. 442; “domini maris et transmarini passagii,” A.D. 1336, Fœdera, iv. 721; “le roi de la mier,” A.D. 1372, Rot. Parl., ii. 311; “seigneurs del meer,” A.D. 1420, ibid., iv. 126, &c., &c.

[6] Fœdera, xvi. 395; State Papers, Dom. 1604, 11, 40; Fœdera, xix. 211; Libelle of Englyshe Polycye; Dee, General and Rare Memorials, 6; State Papers, Dom. 1662, 66, 50, “It is a fundamental Maxime of England, that the sea flowing about the Isle of Great Britaine is of the same dominion with the isle”; “the dominion of the ambient seas.”

[7] Rot. Escheat., 41 Hen. III., A.D. 1259, referred to by Coke, 1. 107a; Bracton, Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, lib. v. c. xxx. fol. 437 (A.D. circa 1259); Statutes of the Realm, 18 Edw. I. Stat. 4 (A.D. 1290); Rot. Parl., 13 Ric. II., “deinz les quatre miers Dengleterre,” &c.

[8] Hall, On the Rights of the Crown in the Sea Shores of the Realm, p. 1.

[9] “The guardian of his Majesty’s three seas” (A.D. 1607). Cæsar Papers, MS. Brit. Mus. Lansd., 142, fol. 373.

[10]

“Thene here I ende of the comoditees
Ffor whiche nede is well to kepe the sees;
Este and weste, sowthe and northe they be;
And chefely kepe the sharpe narowe see,
Betwene Dover and Caleise.”

[11] Acts of the Privy Council of England, N.S., i. 232, 242.

[12] Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 50.

[13] Mare Clausum, ii. c. xiii.

[14] Selden, Mare Clausum, lib. i. c. viii., lib. ii. cc. ii.-viii.

[15] Polyhistor., c. xxiv.

[16] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xi.

[17] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xii. “Canutus autem Rex suæ ditionis esse Oceanum Britannicum verbis expressissimis item est testatus.” Prynne uses the same argument. Animadversions on Coke’s Fourth Institute, 88.

[18] Ed. Petrie, 395.

[19] Gesta Regum Anglorum, i. 235; Eng. Hist. Soc. “Ego Edgarus totius Albionis Basileus nec non maritimorum seu insulanorum Regum circumhabitantium.”

[20] “Ego Edgardus Anglorum Basileus omniumque Regum insularum, Oceanique Britanniam circumjacentis cunctarumque nationum quæ infra eam includuntur Imperator et Dominus,” &c. Dee, General and Rare Memorials, 58, 60; Selden, Mare Clausum, ii. c. xii. (quoting from a charter of Inspeximus, Rot. Pat., 1 Edw. IV., m. 23); Prynne, op. cit., 87.

[21] Concilia, i. 432.

[22] Ibid., i. 239.

[23] Codex Diplomaticus, ii. 404, vi. 237.

[24] Diplomatarium Anglicum Ævi Saxonici, 211.

[25] Cartularium Saxonicum, iii. 377.

[26] “Insularum oceani quæ Brytanniam circumjacent.”

[27] Worsaae, An Account of the Danes and Norwegians in England, Scotland, and Ireland; Depping, Histoire des Expéditions maritimes des Normands; Beamish, The Discovery of America.

[28] Burrows, Cinque Ports, 62, 81.

[29] Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages, 173.

[30] Twiss, The Law of Nations in Time of Peace, 244; ibid., In Time of War, 142.

[31] [See p. 51].

[32] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xiv.

[33] “Pour garder la mere,” “la garde du meer,” “la sauve garde du meer,” “pro custodia maris,” “de custodia maritimæ,” &c. See Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England; Nicolas, History of the Royal Navy; Prynne, Animadversions.

[34] Fœdera, i. 861; Nicolas, op. cit., i. 279, 437.

[35] Twiss, The Law of Nations in Time of Peace, 245.

[36] Vide Twiss, Black Book of the Admiralty, i. 420.

[37] Op. cit., lib. ii. c. xviii.

[38] Twiss, ibid., i. 64.

[39] Nicolas, op. cit., i. 131, 231, ii. 45, 84, 130, 176; Rot. Pat., 65 (1206); Fœdera, i. 96 (1208).

[40] Chronicles, ii. 497.

[41] Op. cit., lib. ii. cc. xiii., xx.

[42] Rot. Parl., iii. 46b; Nicolas, op. cit., ii. 260-280; Laughton, Studies in Naval History, 16-22. The Yarmouth herring fishing suffered severely in these years, and the fishermen equipped and armed vessels for their own defence,—Chronicon Angliæ, ab A.D. 1328 usque ad annum 1388, p. 170, Rolls Series.

[43] Op. cit., lib. ii. c. xv.

[44] Rot. Parl., iii. 63b, 391a; Fœdera, vii. 220. “C’este l’ordinance et grante par l’advis des Marchaundz de Londres, et des autres Marchaundz vers la North, par assent de touz Communes de Parlement par devant le Comte de Northumberland et le Meair de Londres, pur la garde et tuicion du Mier,” &c. The specified dues throw some light on the commerce and fisheries of the period: (1) all vessels or crayers navigating the seas within the limits of the admiralty of the north were to pay a duty of sixpence a ton-tight, going and returning, with the exception of those bringing wines and goods from Flanders to London, or carrying wool and skins to Calais; (2) vessels laden with goods belonging to merchants of Prussia, Norway, or Scone (Scania) were to pay sixpence a last; (3) vessels carrying coals from Newcastle were to pay sixpence a ton every three months; (4) sixpence a-week per ton was to be paid by all vessels fishing for herrings within the said admiralty, and sixpence every three weeks per ton by boats fishing for other fish.

[45] A.D. 1420, Rot. Parl., iv. 126. “Item, priount les ditz Communes, que par l’ou nostre très soverain seignour le Roy et ses nobles progenitours de tout temps ount esté seignours del meer, et ore par la grace de Dieu est venuz que nostre dit seignour le Roy est seignour des costes d’ambeparties del meer d’ordeigner que sur toutz estraungers passantz parmye le dit meer tiel imposition à l’oeps nostre dit seignour le Roy apprendre qui à luy semblera resonable, pur la salve garde del dit meer.”

[46] Rotuli Scotiæ, i. 442, “Nos advertentes quod progenitores nostri reges Angliæ Domini Maris Anglicani circumquaque et etiam defensores contra hostium invasiones ante hæc tempora extiterint,” &c. Part of the language of this mandate was copied by Charles I. in his ship-money writs. [See p. 211].

[47] Fœdera, iv. 722. “Consideratio etiam quod progenitores nostri, Reges Angliæ, in hujusmodi turbationibus, inter ipsos et alios terrarum exterarum dominos motis, domini maris et transmarini passagii, totis præteritis temporibus, extiterunt,” &c.

[48] Nicolas, op. cit., ii. 49, 106.

[49] Political Poems, ii. 157. The author states that it was coined after Edward captured Calais, when

“The see was kepte, and thereof he was lorde,
Thus made he nobles coigned of recorde.”

But Edward did not take Calais till 1347, while the noble was issued in July 1344. Nicolas, loc. cit.

[50] Oppenheim, A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy, i. 7.

[51] Cunningham, op. cit., 361. In the Libelle it is asked—

“Wher ben our shippes, wher ben our swerdes become?
Our enmyes bid for the ship set a sheep”;

and the rubric of an anonymous commentator states that the advice quoted was owing to the fact that while in the time of Edward III. the English were lords of the sea, they were now in these days mad (vecordes), vanquished, and for waging war and guarding the sea, like sheep. The jest is also alluded to by Capgrave, Liber de Illustribus Henricis, 135.

[52] “Tous les pays tenoient et appelloient nostre avandit seigneur, le Roi de la Mier.”

[53] Rot. Parl., ii. 311.

[54] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvi.

[55] Animadversions, 108.

[56] Nicolas, op. cit., i. 156, but cf. ii. 481; Hannay, A Short History of the Royal Navy, 15. Hannay, as well as the writer of the naval articles in Social England (i. 138), was not apparently aware of the labours of Sir Travers Twiss mentioned in the text.

[57] The Black Book of the Admiralty, i. Intro. xiii et seq., 129; iii. Intro. i, x.

[58] “Item ordonne estoit a Hastynges pour loy et coustumes de mer ou temps du roy Johan lan de son regne second par advys de ses seigneurs temporelz que se le lieutenant en aucun voyage ordonne par commun conseil du royalme encontrent sur la mer aucunes nefz ou vesseaux chargees ou voide que ne veullent avaller et abbesser leurs trefs ou commandement du lieutenant du roy ou de ladmiral du roy, ou son lieutenant, mais combatant encontre iceulx de la flotte que silz puent estre pris quilz soient reputez comme ennemys et leurs nefs, vesseaulx, et bien pris et forfaitz comme biens des ennemys tout soit que les maistres ou possesseurs dicelles vouldroient venir apres et alleguer mesmes les nefs, vesseaulx, et biens estre biens des amys du roy nostre seigneur, et que le mayne estant en icelles soient chastiez par emprisonnement de leur corps pour leur rebellete par discrecion.” The above is given by Twiss from the Whitehall MS. of the eighteenth century; it does not materially differ from the others. The Cottonian MS., which is stated to be the earliest and purest, reads in both places “le lieutenant du roy ou ladmiralle du roy ou soun lieutenant.”

[59] The Black Book, Intro. xix, lxxvii. It is Vespasian MSS., B. xxii.

[60] The Black Book, iii. Intro. viii, x. [See p. 410].

[61] Collection des Lois Maritimes, iv. 199.

[62] Collection des Lois Maritimes, i. Intro. pp. li, 129; iii. Intro. p. xi.

[63] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvi.

[64] “Quanquam tamen, ad primam vocem ipsorum Anglicorum, idem Johannes Willes velum suum declinavit,” &c., Fœdera, viii. 273; “omnes tamen inermes, et velum suum, ad primum clamorem Anglicorum declinantes,” ibid., 277.

[65] Chancery Rolls, Misc. Treaties and Diplomatic, Bdle. 14, No. 15. It is endorsed De Superioritate Maris Angliæ et Jure Officii Admirallatus in eodem. There are several copies on separate membranes in the bundle—viz., 1, 8, 12, 14, 15,—and they differ from one another, as indicated in the transcript in [Appendix A]. Prynne (Animadversions, 109) says that besides the roll in the Tower from which Lord Coke and Selden quoted, he discovered “an ancient copy of it in the White Tower Chapple,” and among the Admiralty papers is a memorandum by Nicholas, undated, but before 1631, on the records in the Tower respecting the Laws of Oleron and the Sovereignty of the Seas, in which he says that “in ye little closset there” a record in French exists, dated in the time of Edw. I. or II., referring to the depredations of Grimbald. There is also a transcript in a collection of MSS. in the British Museum (Harleian, 4314) and a translation of the roll, in a hand of the seventeenth century, in MS. Otho. E. ix. fol. 14.

[66] Fourth Institute, cap. 22, p. 142.

[67] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvii., xxviii., xx., xxiv.

[68] Rot. Pat., 26 Edw. I., part 2, memb. 24, in dorso.

[69] Fœdera, i. 954.

[70] Selden, op. cit., lib. ii. c. xxvii., quoting from Rot. Pat., 31 Edw. I., m. 16, which reads as follows: “Des enterprises, mesprises, et forfaitz en Treue ou en Sufferance, entre nous et le dit Roi de Fraunce, dune part et dautre, es costeres de la mer Dengleterre et autres per decea et ausint per deuers Normandie et autres costeres de la mer per de la.”

[71] The King of France ordered John de Pedrogue, a celebrated seaman of Calais, to collect a fleet there and proceed with it to Holland against the Count of Flanders, who had invested Zierikzee. Included in the fleet were eleven Genoese galleys, under Reyner de Grimaldi, who was given the chief command by Philip, with the title of “Admiral,” John de Pedrogue acting under him. Nicolas (op. cit., i. 373) gives a description of the fight.

[72] The translation, for which I am indebted to Miss E. Salisbury, is from membrane 12.

[73] The expression is also used in a document of 1297, when Lord William de Leybourne is described as “Admiral of the sea of the said King of England.” Fœdera, i. 861.

[74] Coke (op. cit., 143) states that this refers to “De Botetourt,” who, he says, was Admiral “of the sea coasting upon Yarmouth in Norfolk (right over against France) and of that station in anno 22 Edw. I.” Nicolas (op. cit., i. 270, 407) states that Sir John de Botetourt was made commander of the northern fleet in 1293, and in the following year, when Edward divided his fleet into three squadrons, the ships of Yarmouth and the adjacent ports were placed under his charge.

[75] The rest is on the back of the membrane.

[76] The part within brackets is to be found on the membranes 1, 14d, and 15, but not on 12.

[77] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvii. Hall, in his excellent Treatise on International Law ([p. 141]), and with reference apparently to this roll, says that exclusive dominion over the English seas by the English king was acknowledged as early as 1299 (sic), at a commission in Paris, by the representatives of the merchants and mariners of the countries mentioned in the above document.

[78] See [Appendix A].

[79] Chancery Miscel. Rolls, France, Bdl. 5, No. 6.

[80] See translation in [Appendix B].

[81] Chancery Rolls, Misc., Bdle. 14, n. 15, memb. 4.

[82] “Infrascripti sunt articuli generales super quibus et fines ad quos Justiciarii domini nostri Regis sunt consulend’, et dominus noster Rex de eorum consilio certificand’ in Cancellar’ sua in scriptis citra festum, &c.

“Item ad finem, quod resumatur et continuetur ad subditorum prosecucionem forma procedendi quondam ordinata et inchoata per avum Domini nostri Regis et ejus consilium ad retinendum et conservandum antiquam Superioritatem Maris Angliæ et jus officii Admirallatus in eodem, quoad corrigendum, interpretandum, declarandum, et conservandum leges et statuta per ejus antecessores Angliæ Reges dudum ordinata ad conservandum pacem et Justitiam inter omnes gentes nacionis cujuscunque per Mare Angliæ transeuntes, et ad cognoscendum super omnibus in contrarium attemptatis in eodem, et ad puniendum delinquentes et dampna passis satisfaciendum; quæ quidem leges et statuta per Dominum Ricardum quondam Regem Angliæ in reditu suo a Terrâ Sancta correcta fuerunt, interpretata, declarata, et in Insula Oleron publicata, et nominata in Gallica lingua La loy Olyroun.”

According to Godolphin (A View of the Admiral Jurisdiction, 1661), the “form of proceedings” refers to the statute of the Writ of Consultation, 24 Edw. I., with regard to the proceedings of the Courts. The following is on another membrane in the same roll (mem. 2d), which contains ordinances agreed upon between the masters and mariners of England, Bayonne, and Flanders, at Bruges, 8th March 1286. It is in the handwriting of the time of Edward III.

“Item a la fin qe veues et considerees les formes des proces et des lettres ordeinees per les consaillers le dit aiel nostres seigneur le Roi pur eux et la dite nacioun Dengleterre a recouerer et receuer les ditz subgitz aidaunz et alliez et a faire redresser a eux toux les damages a eux donez en Mier et en terre duraunz les dites trewes pees et confederaciouns et countre la forme dycelles par les ditz Fraunceys aidaunz et alliez et eschuire clamour de poeple sur la dite denatureste, &c., et les damages quiex de tiel clamour purroient auenir et especialment a retenir et meintener la souereignete qe ses ditz auncestres Rois Dengleterre soleyent auoir en la dite mier Dengleterre quant alamendement declaracioun et interpretacioun des lois per eux faites a gouerner toutes maneres des gentz passanz per la dite mier. Et primerement a son admirail et as meistres et mariners des nefs des Sync Portz Dengleterre et des autres terres annex a la Corone Dengleterre entendaunt a sa armee en la dite mier pur retenir et meyntenir la garde des lois auauntdites et la puniscioun de toux faitz al encountre en la mier susdite Semblables formes des proces et lettres soient desors tenues od toux les amendementz quiex purrount estre ordeinez par le sage Counsail nostre Seignur le Roi a profist et honur de lui et des soens.”

[83] Twiss (Black Book of the Admiralty, ii. xliii; ii. xi), who collected the old sea laws of Europe, states that the most ancient extant source of modern marine law are the Decisions of the Consuls of the Sea of the City of Trani, on the shores of the Adriatic, which purport to be of the date A.D. 1063; and that the next most ancient are the Judgments of Oleron, of which there are still copies, belonging to the reign of Edward II., in the archives of the Guildhall, for use no doubt in the City court, which administered the Law Merchant and the Law Maritime.

[84] Op. cit., i. 484.

[85] Op. cit.

[86] Op. cit. The specification of the duties within the cognisance of the Admiralty occupies several pages; they included “all cases of seizures and captures made at sea, whether jure belli publicis, or jure belli privati by way of reprisals, or jure nullo by way of piracy ... all causes of spoil and depredations at sea; robberies and pyracies,” &c., &c.

[87] M’Pherson, Annals of Commerce, i. 475, 485, quoting from Fœdera.

[88] 18 Edw. III., st. 2, cap. 3. Several articles in the Black Book show the same desire to encourage foreign merchants, and severe penalties were prescribed for the robbing or wronging of foreign ships, or interference with their freedom to trade.

[89] The Reading of the Famous and Learned Robert Callis, Esqr., upon the Statute of Sewers, 23 Hen. VIII., c. 5, &c., 1622; ed. 1824, p. 48.

[90] “Sur la mere d’Engleterre, devers les parties de Craudon.”

[91] “Et prierent que le Roi, de sa seignurie et poer real, fait sente dreit et punissement del dit fait, de siccome il est seigneur de la mer, et la dite roberie fut fait sur la mer dans son poer, sicomme dessus est dit.”

[92] Nicolas, who gives the details referred to, says that there is no record of these proceedings in the rolls of Parliament. Op. cit., i. 388.

[93] “Et cum dicti nuncii ad tractandum de novo super hujusmodi dampnis per dictum dominum nostrum Regem admissi fuissent, ipsi nuncii, prout alii nuncii præfati Comitis, in tractatibus supradictis, inter cetera quæ requirebant, ante omnia supplicabant, ut dictus dominus Rex ad sectam suam de potestate sua Regia inquiri et justitiam faceret de quadam deprædatione quibusdam hominibus de Flandria nuper de vinis et aliis diversis mercimoniis suis super mare Anglicanum, versus partes de Crauden, infra potestatem dicti domini nostri Regis, per homines de regno Angliæ. Ut dicebant facta asserentes quod vina et mercimonia prædicta eisdem Flandrensibus deprædata adducta, fuerunt infra regnum et potestatem dicti domini Regis, et quod ipse est dominus dicti maris, et deprædatio prædicta facta fuit supra dictum mare infra potestatem suam.” Rot. Pat., 14 Edw. II., pt. ii. m. 26, in dorso. Selden quotes this document (lib. ii. c. xxix.), but his text varies from the above, thus: “... potestatem dicti domini Regis, et quod ad ipsum Regem pertinuit sic facere pro eo quod ipse est dominus dicti maris.”

[94] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxix. p. 282.

[95] That “Crowdon” was in Brittany appears from a letter, dated from Plymouth, 9th December 1402, from Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Lincoln, the Earl of Somerset, and the Earl of Worcester, who were sent to escort Joan of Navarre, Duchess of Brittany, the second wife of Henry IV., to England. “Et par fin force pur un temps nous faut demurrer en Bretaigne car la ou nous avoioms envoie au dite nostre treshonuree et tresredoutee dame pur venir, noz niefs ne poiont ne osent aler en le temps dyver. Et faut qele eit un leisir pur venir pardevers nous, dont le havene que nous pensoms aler ove leide de Dieu est Crowdon.”—Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, i. 190.

[96] Allard, Du Poisson, considéré comme Aliment dans les Temps anciens et modernes.

[97] Garrad, The Arte of War.

[98] In the itinerary of a journey from England made by a Scottish nobleman to join Edward I. in Scotland, it is recorded that herrings were purchased nearly every day—at Dunstable, Newport, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Sherburn, &c. Sixty fresh herrings at York, nearly forty miles from the sea in a straight line, cost eightpence, and fresh haddocks and codlings were also bought.

[99] “Prohibeo etiam firmiter ne quis decimas suas eis injuste detineat sicut habuerunt in tempore regis Davidis super meum forisfactum et ne quis in aquis eorum piscari presumat ... nisi per eorum licentiam.”

[100] Fœdera, ii. 23. “Gent de Flaundres estre venuz sur mer, come Pescheurs,” &c.

[101] Ibid., ii. 37. The Flemish fishermen had probably gone up the Tweed after salmon.

[102] Ibid., ii. 688, dated 28th September. “Quia intelleximus quod multi homines, de partibus Hollandiæ, Zelandiæ et etiam Frislandiæ, qui sunt de amicitia nostra, ad piscandum in mari nostro, prope Jernemuth,” &c.

[103] Lundberg, Det Stora sillfisket i Skåne under medeltiden oeh nyare tidens början. Worms, Hist. commerciale de la Ligue Hanséatique.

[104] Fruin, Tien Jaren uit den Tachtigjarigen Oorlog, 181.

[105] Brit. Mus. MSS. Galba, B. iii. 16. Henry apparently acceded to the request; vide “John Heron’s accompte for waftynge of the herring fleete in the parties of Norfolk and Suffolk, anno quarto R. Henrici VIII.” State Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Hen. VIII., i. 1512.

[106] Ljungman, Nägra ord om de stora Bohus-länska Sillfiskeri.

[107] Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxi.

[108] Rot. Pat., 22 Edw. IV., m. 2; ibid., 2 Ric. III., i. m. 3; ibid., 3 Hen. VII., part ii. dorso; Mare Clausum, lib. ii. xxi.

[109] The Statutes at Large passed in the Parliaments held in Ireland, i. 30. 5 Edw. IV., c. vi. “An Act that no Ship or other Vessel of any Foreign Country shall go to the Fishing in the Irish Countries, and for Custom to be paid of the Vessel that cometh from Foreign Lands to Fishing.”

[110] Britannia, Gough’s edition, ii. 248.

[111] A Pollitique Platt, &c.

[112] State Papers, Dom., James I., xlviii. 94.

[113] Malines, Lex Mercatoria, 189, from whom Selden quotes it, with the remark, “There are some also who affirm that the King of Spain,” &c. Mare Clausum, ii. c. xxx. It is also given by Boroughs and other writers.

[114] State Papers, Dom., Charles I., clxxx. 96.

[115] One of the licenses, which ran for a year, is printed in [Appendix C]. The Zowe was described in 1630 as “a bank which lies between Rye and Dieppe, and the outermost part is nearly one-third over the sea. This zowe which they call the small zowe is 3 leagues long and 3 broad, and 26 and 28 fathoms deep. The French make it 10 leagues, because they fish till they bring Beachy Head N., fayre Loo (? Fairlea, Fairlight) W.N.W., and fish in 30 fathoms.” Sir H. Mainwaring to Coke, “A Short Discourse or Propositions concerning the French fishing uppon the Zowe, theyr abusing it, and the Remedy” (ibid.) It was described as the “chief nursery for turbetts, hollibatts, pearles (brill), soules, weavers and gurnetts.” In Queen Elizabeth’s time only four licenses were granted, but James increased the number to fourteen or fifteen. They were carefully entered in the records of Dover Castle and the Hundred Book of Rye.

[116] Henrici de Bracton, Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, lib. i. c. 12; lib. iii. c. 3. Rolls Series, Introd., by Sir Travers Twiss, i. ii. Güterbock, Henricus de Bracton und sein Verhältniss zum Römischen Rechte, 14, 55.

[117] Fœdera, v. 719. “Il est convenu, &c., &c. Item, que pessoners de la seignurie del roi de Castelle et del counte de Viscay peussent venir et pescher fraunchement et sauvement en les portz d’Engleterre et de Bretaigne, et en touz autres lieux et portz où ils vorrontz, paiantz les droits et les custumes à les seignurs du pais.”

[118] Ibid., v. 763.

[119] Fœdera, viii. 306, 336. “Q’en ceste presente harenguison les pescheurs de l’une part et d’autre puissent pescher plus seurement en la mer la harenk et toutz autres poissons, depuis hable de Grauelinguez et l’isle de Tanent, jusques a l’entree de la riviere de Saine, et au hable de Hautoune.”

[120] Ibid., viii. 451.

[121] Fœdera, viii. 459. “Pro Piscatoribus, sub Dominio Ducis Burgundiæ: ... toutz pescheurs, tant de nostre dit roiaume d’Engleterre et de Caleis, et dez autres noz villes et lieux, come dez ditz conte et paiis de Flandres, dez paiis de Picardie, de Normandie, et de Bretaigne, et generalment de tut le dit roiaume de Fraunce, puissent paisiblement aler par tout sur meer, pur peschier et gaigner lour vivre, saunz en estre reprins ne empeschiez en ascun manere ... et par ainsi que semblablement soit fait et otroie, de lez dites parties de Flandres, Picardie, Normandie, Bretaigne, et autres del dit roiaume de Fraunce, a la seurte dez ditz pescheours de nostre dit roiaume d’Engleterre.”

[122] Ibid., viii. 469, 472. Dumont, Corps Universel Diplomatique du Droit des Gens, &c., II. i. 302. Proc. and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England, i. 282.

[123] Ibid., viii. 530, 548, “Et les pescheurs generalment aler pescher sur mer pour gaignier leur vivre paisiblement.”

[124] Fœdera, ix. 483.

[125] Rot. Parl., iii. 643b.

[126] Pikes and bows and arrows were used. Later, in the early part of the seventeenth century, a regular part of the equipment of a herring-buss was half-pikes and muskets, an estimate for one being—ten half-pikes, £1; muskets with bandaleers, rests, and moulds, £6, with 6 lb. of gunpowder and 6 lb. of leaden bullets.

[127] Fœdera, x. 730, 736, 761, 791. The article on the fishery was as follows: “Que tous pescheurs, tant d’Engleterre, d’Irlande, et de Calais, comme des paiis de Brabant et de Flandres, pourront paisiblement aler par tout sur mer, pour peschier et gaignier leur vivre, sans empeschement ou destourber de l’une partie ne de l’autre. Et avec ce, se fortune ou autre aventure chassoit ou amenoit les diz pescheurs de la partie d’Engleterre, en aucun des ports, havres, destrois, et daugiers des dites paiis de Brabant ou de Flandres, ou les diz pescheurs des dites paiis de Brabant et de Flandres en aucuns des dites ports, havres, destrois, ou daugiers du royaume d’Engleterre, Yrland, et de Calais, que ilz y soient paisiblement et franchement receuz et traictiez raisonnablement d’une coste et d’autre, en paiant aux lieux, ou ils arriveront, les toulieux et devoirs accoustumez, et d’illec puissent liberalment retourner a tout leurs nefs, applois, et biens sans destourbier, arrest, ne empeschement; pourveu que, par les diz pescheurs, d’un coste et d’autre, ne soit commise aucune fraude, ou fait dommaige.” Intercursus continuandus pro spatio duodecim annorum inter Anglos et Flandros, Gandanos, Iperos et civitatis de Brabant. Ibid., xi. 143.

[128] “Et pur toutz sez autres paiis et seigneuries.”

[129] “Et sans qu’il leur soit bosoigne sur ceo requirer ne opteiner ascune license, congie, ou saufconducte.” 5 Jan. 1467/1468. Ibid., xi. 591, 592, 595, 609. Dumont, op. cit., III. i. 592.

[130] Dumont, III. i. 400.

[131] Fœdera, xi. 683.

[132] Ibid., xii. 67. In 1484 Richard III. issued a commission to Thomas Lye, sergeant-at-arms, to make restitution for fishing-boats belonging to subjects of Maximilian, Duke of Austria, which had been taken, laden with fish, by English pirates. Ibid., xii. 227.

[133] “Item, conventum, concordatum et conclusum est quod piscatores utriusque partis partium prædictarum (cujuscunque conditionis existant) poterunt ubique ire, navigare per mare, secure piscari absque aliquo impedimento licentia seu salvo conductu: Et, si contingat aliquos ex piscatoribus unius partis per fortunam, tempestatem maris, vim hostium, aut alio modo compelli intrare aliquem portum vel districtum alterius partis, ibidem pacifice et amicabiliter recipientur et tractabuntur (solvendo in locis ubi applicabunt jura et theolonia prædicta) et ab illis portubus et locis poterunt libere recedere et redire, cum eorum navibus et bonis, sine impedimento vel contradictione quacunque; dummodo tamen per ipsos piscatores non committatur fraus neque dolus, seu per eos aliis dampnum minime fiat.” 24 Feb. (1495)/(1496). Fœdera, xii. 583. Dumont, III. ii. 338.

[134] Fœdera, xii. 714; xiii. 132, 539, 714.

[135] Ships of war were used to convoy the herring-busses of Holland and Zealand at least as early as 1440.

[136] Cal. State Papers, Foreign and Domestic, iii. Nos. 1534, 1535.

[137] Fœdera, xiii. 752. Dumont, IV. i. 352.

[138] Dumont, IV. i. 515. “Pourront aussi les Sujets des Païs, Roiaumes, Terres et Seigneuries dessusdites, librement, et sans détourbier, ni empêchement, pêcher à harangs, et autres poissons en la mer, où ladite Treve aura lieu, et là où la pêche dudit harang s’adonera, comme ils faisoient avant la Guerre, et pourroient et sont accoûtumez de faire au tems de Paix.”

[139] Fœdera, ii. 529, 545. Mieris, Groot Charterboek der Graaven van Holland, &c., ii. 268; iii. 257; iv. 223, 378, 692, 816. Kluit, Historiæ Federum Belgii Federati, 284. Yair, An Account of the Scotch Trade in the Netherlands, 6, 27, 36.

[140] Mieris, op. cit., iv. 146. About this time the Scots also did their best to drive away English fishermen from their coasts. In 1400 they fitted out a small fleet under Sir Robert Logan for this purpose, but it was apparently insufficient, and Logan himself was captured by the men of Lynn. Walsingham, Hist. Anglicana, 364. In 1420 complaint was made to the English Parliament that the Scots had at divers times attacked and taken English fishing vessels. Rot. Parl., iv. 127a.

[141] State Papers, Dom., Charles I., clii. 63. [See p. 218].

[142] “Dat hy voorhadt, de haringvisscherij omtrent zyne kusten te beletten.” Wagenaar, Vaderlandsche Historie, v. 209.

[143] Resol. Staten van Holl., 5/15 September 1540. Bosgoed, Bib. Pisc., 319.

[144] Treaty of Binche, 9/19 February 1540/1541. Dumont, op. cit., IV. ii. 208.

[145] “Et quant au dernier article de la commission du Sr. de Limdy [Lundy] ambassadeur, concernant le fait de la pescherie, ladite Dame Reine [the Queen Dowager of Hungary and Bohemia] veuille par bonne et meure deliberation proceder en telles et semblables affaires, se fera informer sur le contenu dudit article, pour après en ordonner comme il sera trouvé étre de raison, équité, et justice d’une part et d’autre pour la conservation de la paix et amitié mutuelle desdits Sieurs.” Op. cit., and see footnote next page.

[146] Wagenaar, op. cit., 355.

[147] Res. St. Holl., (29 Nov.)/(9 Dec.) 1544; (23 Feb.)/(5 Mar.) 1545, &c. Bosgoed, op. cit., 320.

[148] Dumont, IV. iii. 12. “Circa piscationem verò ac liberum usum maris, ea quæ per supradictum Tractatum anno 1541, 19 Februarii, Binchii inter Serenissimam Reginam Mariam et supra nominatum Oratorem Regis Scotiæ; inita, conclusa ac conventa fuerint debite ac sincere observari debebunt.”

[149] In 1618, when there was much searching of the records in Scotland (where they were kept in a most careless and slovenly manner) to establish the claim of James to the fishing in connection with the approaching visit of the Dutch ambassadors, the Earl of Dunfermline wrote to Lord Binning in London, forwarding a copy, in French, of the treaty of 1541, and said, “Albeit ye will perseive by the last article of the same annent the propositions of the fishings, the Queen of Hungarie and Bohemia, who was for the Emperour Governant of the Low Countries—we call her commonly Frow Mary—in that takes her to further advysement with her Councill, and no thing resolved if any further proceeding; I pray God ye may find it otherwayes.” MSS. Advoc. Lib., 31. 2. 16.

[150] The heads of the treaty and the ratifications are given by Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, V. i. 507. The treaty itself is published in full by Bor, Vervolgh Vande Nederlantssche Oorlogen ende Geschiedenissen, iv. fol. 48-52.

[151] E.g., in 1573, that “all maner of fischeris that occupyis the sey and vtheris persounis quhatsumeuer” that catch herrings or white fish “vpon the coist or within the Ilis or outwith the samin within the Fyrthis” should bring them to free ports to be sold. Acta Parl. Scot., iii. c. 7.

[152] Leslie, De Origine Moribus et Rebus Gestis Scotorum, 24. A point of land near Inveraray in Loch Fyne was long known, and is still known, as Frenchman’s Point or French Farl, the tradition being that it was to this place that herrings were brought to be sold and cured. Old Statistical Account of Scotland, v. 291.

[153] Register Privy Council of Scotland, i. 482.

[154] De Dominio Maris, 16. In another work Welwood says, “And for the eastern seas, direct from Scotland, what is more antiently notorious than that covenant twixt Scottish men and Hollanders, concerning the length of their approaching toward Scotland by way of fishing.” An Abridgement of All Sea Lawes, c. 26.

[155] Register Privy Council of Scotland, iv. 216.

[156] Much information on the fisheries of the Netherlands will be found in Professor A. Beaujon’s History of Dutch Sea Fisheries, 1884.

[157] 33 Hen. VIII., c. 2.

[158] 37 Hen. VIII., c. 23; 5 & 6 Edw. VI., c. 17; 7 Edw. VI., c. 11; 1 Mary, st. 2, c. 13.

[159] Acts of the Privy Council of England, i. 103, 104, 106, 112, 114, an. 1543.

[160] 2 & 3 Edw. VI., c. 19. Certain exceptions, of those licensed, ill, or very old, or in prison, were made.

[161] State Papers, Dom., Addenda, Edw. VI., iv. 56. The paper, which is endorsed by Cecil, “The Answer of the Fishmongers,” is undated, but that it belongs to the reign of Edward VI. (1547-1553) is proved by the words, “the reign of our late sovereign, Henry VIII.” The return of 1528, referred to by the fishmongers, is among the State Papers (Foreign and Domestic Letters and Papers, Hen. VIII., iv. pt. 2, No. 5101). It states that 149 vessels went to the Iceland fishing, mostly from Yarmouth, Blakeney, Cromer, Dunwich, Walderswick, and Southwold; the herring-fishing in the North Sea employed 222, of which 110 belonged to the Cinque Ports, while 69 went to Shetland, the total being 440. Shetland lings were in those days greatly prized, and brought very high prices.

[162] State Papers, Dom., Addenda, Edw. VI., iv. 57. “The decaied Porte Townes w^th nombers of good villages a longe by the sea cost of this realm, within these twentie or thirtie years;” undated, but belonging to the same period, with Cecil’s calculations written on the back.

[163] State Papers, Dom., Elizabeth, xxvii. 71, February 1563. Endorsed, “Arguments for Increase of the Navy,” and “Arguments to prove that it is necessary for the restoring of the navy of England to have one Day more in ye weeke ordained to be a fish day, and that to be Wensday rather than any other.”

[164] The exportation, without license, of herrings, among other things, had been forbidden by 1 & 2 Ph. and Mary, c. 5 (1554); but by 1 Eliz., c. 17, subjects were permitted to export sea fish taken by subjects in English ships free of customs for four years.

[165] “The causes of the decay of fishing must be the lack of the vse of fishing, which must be divided into ij partes, small eating of fisshe in ye Realme, and not selling of it abroad.”

[166] The number of French vessels engaged in the Newfoundland fisheries is placed at 500, with 15,000 men; and over 100, with at least 1000 men, fished at Iceland for “herrings,”—but no doubt for cod and ling.

[167] There are many other memoranda amongst the State Papers, some in Cecil’s handwriting, which deal with fish-days. One gives in detail a note of all the fish-days throughout the year, amounting to 186, and in addition “a number of sayntes evens were fastyng dayes that now be not observed.” Ibid., xxxi. 41, 42 (1563).

[168] 5 Eliz. c. 5. The debate on the Wednesday proposal lasted three days, the clause being ultimately carried by 179 to 97 (Commons Journals, i. 68). It was in view of the expected opposition that the long paper above referred to was prepared. The Wednesday was not put on quite the same footing as the Fridays and Saturdays, since “one only usual competent dish of flesh and no more” was allowed, provided that at the same table “three full competent usual dishes of sea fish of sundry kinds, either fresh or salt,” were served and eaten “without fraud or covin.” Another clause explained that the object was “meant politically for the increase of fishermen and mariners, and repairing of port towns and navigation”, and not for any superstition “regarding choice of meats”; any one stating the contrary was to be punished.

[169] Among the imports of fish from the Low Countries at this time were “cods-heads, cod-fish, eels, ‘gull-fish,’ haddocks, herrings, ling, salmon, salt-fish, sturgeon, and ‘staple-fish.’” Hall, A History of the Customs Revenue in England, ii. 237.

[170] State Papers, Dom., Eliz., xxxv. 36.

[171] 13 Eliz., c. 11.

[172] State Papers, Dom., Eliz., xlviii. 83.

[173] Hatfield MSS., i. 1177, 27th June 1568.

[174] 13 Eliz., c. 11. In the preamble it is said the former Act “is a very good Act, and greatly increased the navy and fishermen.”

[175] State Papers, Dom., Eliz., lxxv. 16.

[176] In the same year the author, at a dinner he gave at Westminster to the burgesses representing “all the stately port towns of England,” explained the substance of his “plat”; several of them suggested that a subsidy should be raised on land and goods to set the scheme afloat; and the Speaker remarked that “a Parliament had been called for a less cause.”

[177] Burghley Papers, A.D. 1572, MSS. Lansd. 14, No. 30. As the catalogue states, the signature is erased, and the paper is entered as anonymous; but careful scrutiny shows that it was signed “Rob^t. Hitchcock.”

[178] A Pollitique Platt for the honour of the Prince, the greate profite of the publique state, relief of the poore, preseruacion of the riche, reformation of Roges and Idle persones, and the wealthe of thousandes that knowes not howe to liue. Written for an Newyeres gift to Englande and the inhabitantes thereof, by Robert Hitchcok, late of Cauersfeelde, in the Countie of Buckyngham, Gentleman. London, 1st Januarie 1580.

[179] In the early MS. copy presented to the Queen the 400 vessels were to be from 100 to 200 tons, costing £400 each, and the crew was to consist of a master, nine mariners, and thirty “rogues and lustie vagabonds” obtained in the same forcible way.

[180] This place, frequently mentioned in old works and papers referring to the fisheries, was Vardö, or Vardöhuus, at the mouth of the Varangerfjord, Finmarken, on the north-east coast of Norway, or, as it was often described, Lapland. The king of Denmark had a castle on the island, and dues had to be paid for liberty to fish. A number of English vessels went there in spring, returning towards the end of summer.

[181] In France at this time, according to other records, Flemish herrings brought £25 per last; Yarmouth, £10; Irish, £18; “coast” herrings and Scotch, £11.

[182] The Pollitique Platt is earnest and even religious in tone, and it is obvious that the author spent much time in collecting the information and elaborating his scheme, which in all sincerity was meant for the good of his country. Even after three centuries one learns with regret (from his letter preserved at Hatfield) that he had to petition the Privy Council, “for his relief and maintenance in these his now declining years” (1596), to cause every innkeeper, &c., to purchase from him, for sixpence, and put up publicly, a printed table, or “breviate,” describing the “benefits that growe to this Realme by the Observance of Fish-Daies.”

[183] Better known by its running title, The Brytish Monarchie. It is a very rare work, only 100 copies having been printed. The author’s own copy is in the British Museum.

[184] P.7.

[185] Sir John Constable’s case. Moore, Hist. Foreshore, 225, from Hargrave MSS., 15, fol. 95d. In the case for the crown the claim to the sea is very briefly put: “Car quant est floud est parcel del mere que est solement en le Roign et nemy en ascun subject; car est pur passage pur chescun, mes owner de ceo nul si non le Roign.” Anderson, Les Reports du Treserudite, i. 86. (ed. 1664). In a MS. in the Cottonian collection (Galba, C. 11, “Acta inter Angliam et Belgium, 1564-1567”) it is said the jurisdiction of the Prince in the adjoining sea extends for a distance of 100 miles unless (1) in seas lying between the territories of two princes which contain less than a hundred miles, in which case it extends to the mid-line—usq’ ad mediũ eiusdem maris extenditur; (2) where another prince has a right to the whole sea. The authorities referred to are Bartolus, Angelus, Paulus de Castro, and Joan de Platea.

[186] Op. cit., 21.

[187] Two MS. copies exist, one bound up with Dee’s copy of the General and Rare Memorials in the British Museum, which was sent to Dyer with the MS., the other in Harleian MSS. 249, fol. 95. The latter, which is a draft, is addressed “To my very honorable frende Syr Edward Dyer, Knight,” and a note inscribed on it says, “Written by Dr John Dee, out of whose library I bought it after his death A^o D^o 1625, S.D.” The title on both MSS. is ΘΑΛΑΤΤΟΚΑΡΤΙΑ ΒΡΕΤΤΑΝΙΚΗ: Miscelanea quædam extemporanea de Imperii Britannici Iurisdictione in Mari; and both are dated 8th September 1597.

[188] Lat. 49° 6´ N., long. 2° 49´ W.

[189] “All those that pass within our sea jurisdiction (either absolute or respective) and therein commit any notable offence against us may lawfully by our power be taken; and the same offenders may as lawfully and justly be punished, as if on our land territory an offence like, or of like degree of injury, were by them against us committed.” “Absolute” jurisdiction applied to the sea where both coasts belonged to England; “respective” where it terminated half seas over.

[190] In 1597 Dee expressed his grief and surprise that so little had been done or attempted with regard to the sovereignty of the sea, “and so my labours (after a sort) vaynely employed.” MS.

[191] Bullarium Romanum Novissimum, i. 346. “Insulæ novi Orbis à Ferdinando Hispaniarum Rege, et Elisabeth Regina repertæ, et reperiendæ, conceduntur eisdem, propagandæ fidei Christianæ causa ... omnes insulas et terras firmas inventas et inveniendas, detectas ad detegendas versus Occidentem et Meridiem fabricando, et construendo unam lineam à Polo Arctico scilicet Septentrione, ad Polum Antarcticum, scilicet Meridiem, sive terræ firmæ, et insulæ inventæ et inveniendæ sint versus Indiam aut versus aliam quamcumque partem, quæ linea distet à qualibet Insularum, quæ vulgariter nuncupantur de los Azores y cabo vierde, centum læucis versus Occidentem et Meridiem,” &c. Art. 8, “prohibet aliis accessum ad illas insulas pro mercibus habendis absque Regis licentia.”

[192] Harrisse, The Diplomatic History of America, 78.

[193] Selden, Mare Clausum, i. c. xvii.

[194] Selden, loc. cit.

[195] Camden, Annales, 225 (ed. 1635).

[196] Hatfield MSS., ii. 684. “Whether Your Majesty’s Subjects may lawfully trade into the Indies.” Undated, but calendered under the year 1578.

[197] Hautefeuille, Hist. des Origines, des Progrès, et des Variations du Droit maritime international, 15. Hall, A Treatise on International Law, 142.

[198] Rot. Parl., iv. 79b. The petition declared that owing to the fish having deserted the coasts where they used to be taken, the fishermen had been forced to go to Iceland and other places for six or seven years past in order to catch them. English fishermen, however, had frequented Iceland long before that time.

[199] Fœdera, ix. 322.

[200] Rot. Parl., iv. 348, 378. 8 Hen. VI., c. 2.

[201] Fœdera, xii. 381.

[202] Ibid., xiii. 798.

[203] State Papers, Dom., Elizabeth, clxxx. 26, 15th July 1585.

[204] Ibid., ccxiii. 92.

[205] Fœdera, xvi. 278. A license granted in 1570 to an Englishman, one Raymond Binge, for fishing at Iceland for seven years, gave permission for his boats to be kept and wintered in the ports there, on payment of the customs and abstaining from trading, as well as freedom of fishing except where prohibited by royal edicts, reserved for the king’s use, or granted to others. Brit. Mus. Vespasian MSS., C. xiv. fol. 21.

[206] Complaint of the Mayor of Kingston-upon-Hull to Cecil, 2nd July 1599. State Papers, Dom., cclxxi. 68.

[207] Fœdera, xvi. 395, 432.

[208] Brit. Mus. Vespasian MSS., C. xiv. fol. 22. Fœdera, xvi. 431.

[209] State Papers, Dom., cclxxiv.

[210] Fœdera, xvi. 433.

[211] Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 380.

[212] 23 Eliz., c. 7, 1580-81. Brit. Mus. Lansd. MSS., 14.

[213] 39 Eliz., c. 10.

[214] The price of stock-fish had risen from £12 a last in 1584 to £18 and £20 in 1597, and the price of cured ling in the same time advanced from £3 to £5, 5s. per cwt. State Papers, Dom., cclxv.

[215] A commission of eleven peers, three bishops, and two law-officers had been appointed in 1593 for the repeal of the Act respecting the importation of salted fish and herrings. Ibid., ccxliv. 84.

[216] Ibid., cxlvii. 21, 22.

[217] 27 Eliz., c. 11.

[218] 35 Eliz., c. 7.

[219] Jeninges, A briefe discouery of the damages that happen to this Realme by disordered and vnlawfull diet, 1593. Hitchcock, A briefe note of the benefits that grow to this Realme by the observation of Fish-Daies, Hatfield MSS., 1595. State Papers, Dom., cclxv. 25. Remembrancia, 391 et seq.

[220] Every Man in His Humour, Act 3, sc. 4.

[221] Froude, Hist. England, iii. 69.

[222] King Edward’s Journal, in Burnet, Hist. Reformation, ii. (v. of ed. 1865). Oppenheim, Hist. Administration Roy. Navy, 106.

[223] Acts of the Privy Council of England, iv. 37. 7th May 1552.

[224] Selden, Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxvi.

[225] Raleigh, A Discourse of the Invention of Ships, Collected Works, viii. 326. Monson, Naval Tracts, in Churchill’s Collection of Voyages and Travels, iii.

[226] Monson, op. cit. Laughton, Fortnightly Review, Aug. 1866.

[227] Froude, op. cit., viii. 68. Laughton, loc. cit.

[228] An undated State Paper, calendared under the year 1604, entitled “Reglement for Preventing Abuses in and about the Narrow Seas,” contains a claim by the king to a most absolute dominion over the Four Seas (State Papers, Dom., James, xi. 40). It appears, however, to be merely a copy of the similar regulation prepared in 1633 by Sir Henry Martin ([see p. 252]). It is not contained in the volume of royal proclamations published in 1609, and is not referred to by Selden. It has no doubt been wrongly calendared.

[229] It is given in [Appendix D], from A Booke of Proclamations, published since the beginning of his Majesties most happy Reigne ouer England, &c., Vntill this present Moneth of Febr. 3, Anno. Dom. 1609. Cum Priuilegio, p. 98.

[230] “Item, conventum et conclusum est, quod, dicto bello durante, nullus subditus principum prædictorum, intra portus et sinus maris quoscumque, flumina, ostia fluminum, gurgites, aquas dulces, stationes navium, et præsertim stationem vulgariter vocatam les Dunes, aut alia loca maritima quæcumque jurisdictioni dicti Regis Angliæ subjecta aliquam navem mercatoriam, onerariam, armatam vel non armatam, onustam seu vacuam, cujuscumque quantitatis aut oneris fuerit, de quacumque natione eadem navis extiterit, capere, spoliare, diripere, seu merces, victualia, aut armamenta quæcumque, ab eisdem navibus, aut earumdem nautis auferre, nec eisdem vim, violentiam, aut molestationem aliquam inferre possit, aut debeat,” &c. Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, IV. i. 352.

[231] This interesting document is printed in [Appendix E], from State Papers, Dom., James I., vol. 13 (1605), No. 11; No. 12 is another of the same. It is not the original, but a copy, the names being all in the same hand as the body of the paper. Diligent search among the records has failed to furnish the “plott” referred to, but there is no reason to doubt that the reproduction of it by Selden (Mare Clausum, lib. ii. c. xxii.), and shown here on fig. 3, is an accurate representation. Selden states that the plott or chart was engraved, and copies sent to the officers concerned.

[232] It will be noticed from fig. 4, where the lines between the headlands are shown on a modern map, that some of the “chambers” on the east coast have entirely disappeared, no doubt owing to the erosion or silting up of the coast at those places during the last three hundred years.

[233] In stormy weather as many as 300 or 400 sail of Hollanders took refuge in St George’s Channel at a time. State Papers, Dom., xlv. 23 (1609).

[234] Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, i. 424.

[235] Gardiner, Hist. England, i. 103.

[236] Declaratie van de visscherijen in Holland Zeeland en Vlaanderen. Fruin, Tien Jaren uit den Tachtigjarigen Oorlog, 1588-1598, p. 186.

[237] Descrittione Di M. Lodovico Gvicciardini Patritio Florentino, Di Tvtti i Paesi Bassi, Altrimenti Detti Germania Inferiore, Antwerp, 1567, p. 21. The value of the cod caught was placed at £150,000 sterling per annum.

[238] Hadrianus Junius, Batavia, p. 203. The work was written between 1565 and 1569, and published in 1588.

[239] Hitchcock, A Pollitique Platt. The author says that when he was at the wars in 1553, more than 400 busses were set forth from twelve towns in the Low Countries. Dee, General and Rare Memorials.

[240] Faulconnier, Description Historique de Dunkerque, i. 47, 53, 121.

[241] Van Meteren, Historie der Nederlandscher ende haerder Naburen Oorlogen (1614), fol. 466. This author says the maritime power of the States was shown in the same year, when between 800 and 900 ships departed for the Baltic within the space of two or three days’ tides.

[242] John Keymer’s Observation made upon the Dutch Fishing about the year 1601. Demonstrating that there is more Wealth raised out of Herrings and other Fish in his Majesties Seas, by the neighbouring Nations in one Year, then the King of Spain hath from the Indies in Four. London, Printed from the original Manuscript, for Sir Edward Ford, in the year 1664. Keymer states that he found in Holland more than 20,000 sail of ships and “hoyes,” more than was possessed by England, France, Spain, and other eight countries in Europe. The same figure is given by Sir Thomas Overbury, who visited the Netherlands in 1609 (Observations in his Travels, upon the State of the Seventeen Provinces, 1626).

[243]

Observations touching Trade and Commerce with the Hollander, and Other Nations; presented to King James, wherein is proved that our Sea and Land Commodities serve to enrich and strengthen other Countries against our own. Raleigh’s Collected Works, viii. 351. Oldys, in his Life of Raleigh, which was published in 1736, says there was some reason to doubt whether Sir Walter Raleigh was the author of this treatise: it was first printed in 1653, first associated with Raleigh’s name by being bound up with his “Remains” in 1656, and first definitely said to be Raleigh’s by Roger Coke in his Detection of Court and State; and he gives reasons for the opinion that it was written by John Keymer and not by Raleigh (Collected Works, i. 441). But, as Raleigh’s latest biographer states, Raleigh still has the credit of it (Stebbing, Sir Walter Raleigh, 267). I have, however, found the original signed manuscript copy among the State Papers for 1620 (State Papers, Dom., cxviii. 114, December 1620), and an unsigned and slightly altered copy among those for 1623 (State Papers, Dom., clvii. 45). The original is endorsed, Keymers booke of observac͠ons for your moste excellent Ma^tie touchinge trade and traffique beyond y^e Seas and in England wherein he certaynly findeth y^t your sea and land Commodities doe searve to inrich and strengthen other Cuntries agnst your Kingdome; w^ch were y^e urgent causes why he endeavoured himselfe to take extraordynarie paynes for y^e redresse: soe it maie stande w^th your Ma^ties good Likinge. 1620. It is subscribed, “Your Ma^ties most loyall and true harted Subject, John Keymer,” and it is the same treatise as is published in Raleigh’s Works, with a few trifling verbal differences, while the concluding sentence is omitted in the printed form—viz., “To conclude, England is a great and famous body and would be farr greater, richer and stronger, if the ten fingers were rightly imployed.” Further proof exists that Keymer was the author of this much-discussed treatise. Its object was to show how the trade and revenue might be greatly increased, and the author begged the king to have a commission appointed to examine witnesses as to his proposals. This commission was appointed two years later, as appears from the following entry in the Grant Book in 1622: “20 Dec. Com̃ to Charles, pr. of Wales, John Bp. of Linc., Ld Keeper of y^e g. seale, Lewis Duke of Lennox, Geo. Marquis Buck., &c. to hear the propositions which shall be made by John Keymer and to consider whether they will tend to the good of y^e King, and commonwealth as is pretended” (State Papers, Dom., Jas. I. (Grants), vol. 141, p. 352). There does not appear to be any further mention of the matter. This John Keymer is supposed to be the same as a person of that name who was licensed by Raleigh about 1584 to sell wines at Cambridge. Among the MSS. at Hatfield are letters from him, dated in 1598, to Cecil and the Earl of Essex, in which he speaks of his services, of “his travels and labours to find out the practises used beyond the seas to their advantage and our great danger and how to prevent the same,” and of his works, one of which he said showed how to increase the Queen’s treasure above £100,000 a year. He also corresponded with Carleton in 1619. In his address to the king, prefixed to the treatise of 1620, he mentions that “about fourteen or fifteen years past” he had presented him with “a book of such extraordinary importance for the honour and profit” of his Majesty and posterity, which was doubtless the earlier tract referred to above, and would fix its date about 1605 or 1606. He was also engaged on the fishery question about 1612 (doubtless in connection with the proposed society), because Tobias Gentleman, whose work was published in the spring of 1614, tells us that he was visited “some two yeares past” by “Maister John Keymar,” who was collecting information about the fisheries, with the view of placing it before the Council (Englands Way to Win Wealth, 3).

Fig. 5.—Facsimile of Keymer’s Signature to his ‘Book of Observations.’

The copy of Keymer’s tract, which is among the State Papers of 1623, is unsigned, and is simply calendared as “Tract addressed to the King, consisting of observations made by the writer in his travels on the coasts,” &c.; but the person who calendared the paper has written on it, in pencil, “q. By Sir Walter Cope (ob. 1614). See 1612, a letter or discourse to the King, to which this was attached,” and has added the name “Walter Cope” at the end. The paper referred to (State Papers, Dom., vol. 71, No. 89) has written on it in the old hand, “Sr Walter Cope to K.,” and “Anno Domini 1612. A present for the Kinges most excellent Maiestie.” It is only mentioned here because the draft of it, which is the next paper in the volume (No. 90) and has several corrections on the first page, bears the following note in one of the corners, “Nota Mr Chancellor and Malynes wife (?) the ... of Maye, Ralegh.” The meaning is obscure, but perhaps it may be surmised from the contents that Malynes, who was at that time concerned with the fishery society proposals, had submitted it to Sir Walter Raleigh, and that ultimately it was presented to the king by Sir Walter Cope, who was on intimate terms with him.

[244] Englands Way to Win Wealth, and to employ Ships and Mariners; or, A plaine description what great profite it will bring vnto the Commonwealth of England, by the Erecting, Building, and aduenturing of Busses, to Sea, a Fishing: With a true Relation of the inestimable Wealth that is yearly taken out of his Majesty’s Seas by the Hollanders, &c., by Tobias Gentleman, Fisherman and Mariner, London, 1614.

[245] State Papers, Dom., Jas. I., xlvii. 114.

[246] Keymer, Observations on Dutch Fishing; Gentleman, op. cit.; Buchanan, Rerum Scot. Hist., lib. i. c. xlix; Leslie, De Origine Moribus et Rebus Gestis Scotorum, 39; Register Privy Council of Scotland, ii. 656; MSS. Advoc. Lib., 31. 2. 16.

[247] State Papers, Dom., xxxii. 31. Other accounts are as follows. In 1609 the Earl of Salisbury wrote (erroneously) that while fifty or sixty years before only one or two hundred foreign vessels came to fish on the east coast, they then numbered two or three thousand sail (Winwood, Memorials, iii. 50). Sir William Monson in the same year placed the number of Hollander busses at 3000 and the number of men at over 30,000 (State Papers, Dom., xlvii. 112, 114). Sir Nicholas Hales also estimated the number of men at 30,000 (Ibid., xlv. 23; cclxxiv. 67). In the following year the Dutch ambassadors admitted that 20,000 men were employed in the great herring fishery, as well as other 40,000 in connection with it on shore (Ibid., lxvii. 111). A little later, in 1616, the Secretary to the Duke of Lennox told the Dutch ambassador that in the previous June, 1500 or 1600 Hollander busses were at Shetland (Add. MSS. Brit. Mus., 17,677, J, fol. 160). In 1618 the number fishing on the east coast of Scotland sometimes exceeded 2000 sail (MSS. Advoc. Lib., 31. 2. 16). Malynes in 1622 placed the number of busses from Holland and Zealand at 2000 (Consuetudo vel Lex Mercatoria, 89). Two years later a Spanish agent described them as consisting of 2400 vessels, guarded by 40 men-of-war, and scattered over an area of 200 leagues (State Papers, Dom., dxxi. 30). In 1629 Secretary Coke, who derived the information from a Scottish source, said the Hollander busses sometimes amounted to 3000 sail; three years later he put the number in connection with the fishery off Yarmouth at “above a thousand”; at this time the French vessels numbered 40 (Ibid., Chas. I., clii. 63; ccxxix. 79). Beaujon (op. cit., p. 64) expresses the opinion that 2000 busses were the maximum number.

[248] To Pomerania, Poland, “Spruceland,” Denmark, Liefland, Russia, Sweden, Germany, Brabant, Flanders, France, “Lukeland,” England, Greece, Egypt, Venice, Leghorn, and all over the Mediterranean, and even as far as Brazil.

[249] State Papers, Dom., xlvii. 112.

[250] To the King’s most excellent Majesty: A Declaration of the fishing of Herring, Cod, and Ling, and how much the favour or disfavour of Your Royal Majesty concerneth the Hollanders. Ibid., xxxii. 30; cclxxix. 67.

[251] Misselden, The Circle of Commerce, or the Balance of Trade, 1623, p. 121. It may be said that the aggregate quantity of herrings now taken in the North Sea, and mostly by Scottish and English fishermen, equals about 3,500,000 barrels in a year.

[252] Manship, History of Great Yarmouth, 119, 121.

[253] Gentleman, op. cit., 7, 32.

[254] Keymer, Observations on Dutch Fishing.

[255] Manship, op. cit., 97, 120. The work was written between 1612 and 1619.

[256] Gentleman, op. cit., 36; Swinden, History of Great Yarmouth, 465; State Papers, Dom., xlvii. 112, 114.

[257] Meynert Semeyns, Een corte beschryvinge over de Haring-visscherye in Hollandt.

[258] Keymer, Observations on Dutch Fishing; Monson, Naval Tracts, in Churchill’s Collection, iii. 467; H. Robinson, Briefe Considerations concerning the Advancement of Trade, p. 50; England’s Great Interest by encouraging the setting up of the Royal Fishery, &c., &c.

[259] A Demonstration of the Hollanders increase in Shipping and our Decay herein. State Papers, Dom., xlvii. 112.

[260] The Trades Increase. Keymer, Observations on Dutch Fishing, &c. Observations touching Trade, &c., Raleigh’s Works, viii. 374. State Papers, Dom., xlviii. 114.

[261] A Discourse of the Invention of Ships. Works, viii. 325.

[262] In one of the most elaborate and detailed of the proposals for the building of busses, the daily allowance of beer for each man was to be a gallon, as in the king’s ships: the buss was to go to sea with 56 herring barrels full of beer. E. S.—Britaines Bvsse, or a Computation as well of the Charge of a Bvsse or Herring fishing ship as also of the Gain and Profit thereby. London, 1615.

[263] Keymer, Observations on Dutch Fishing. The industrious Hollander was held up as an example to the English. “If any be so weak,” said one writer, “to think this mechanical fisher trade not feasible to the English people, to him I may say with Solomon, Go to the Pismire! Look upon the Dutch! Thou Sluggard! learn of them! They do it daily in the sight of all men at our own doors, upon our own coasts.” “Shall we,” said another, “neglect so great blessings? O slothful England, and careless Countrymen! Look but on these fellows, that we call the plump Hollanders; behold their diligence in fishing and our own careless negligence.”

[264] State Papers, Dom., James I., lxxi. 89. Malynes, who, as already suggested in the note on page 128, may have been the author of Cope’s tract, said exactly the same thing in 1622—that there had been a continual agitation for over thirty years to make busses and fisher-boats. The Maintenance of Free Trade, 42.

[265] J. Bowssar to Sir Julius Cæsar, 14th October 1607, Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 373.

[266] A Project for to restore unto the King’s Majestie his Dueties of Fishing by re-establishing ye Auncient Manner of fishing for herringe, Coad, and Ling, for maintenaunce of Navigation and Marryners with greatt increase of Traffique, 22nd April 1609, Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 371. State Papers, Dom., xlviii. 95.

[267] Treaty of Antwerp, 30 March/9 April 1609.

[268] A rubric in the copy at the Record Office says, “By Proclamation first, most convenient to all the world.”

[269] State Papers, Dom., xlviii. 94. It is written on parchment and imperfect, and endorsed, “Mr Rainsford’s Answeares.”

[270] [See p. 64].

[271] To the King’s Most excellent Majestie: A Declaration of the Fishing of Herring, Codd, and Ling, and how greatly the favour or disfavour of Your Royal Majesty concerneth the Hollanders. State Papers, Dom., xxxii. 32. A Declaration how much the Favour or Disfavour of Your Royal Majestie doth concern the Prosperity or Adversitie of the Hollanders: and what inconvenience may ensue, and how to praevent the same to the honour and safety of your Majesty and the tranquillitie of the Netherlanders. Ibid., xlv. 23.

[272] A Demonstration of the Hollanders Increase in Shipping and our Decay herein. Ibid., xlvii. 112. Particulars of the Lawes observed by other Nations touching fishing, and the Advantages that would accrue from establishing an English Fishing fleet. Ibid., 114.

[273] Records of the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, ii. 203, July 2, 1605.

[274] State Papers, Dom., xxxii. 31.

[275] State Papers, Dom., xlv. 22. The petition was signed by fishermen of Yarmouth, Dover, Hastings, Rye, Hythe, and Folkestone. It is said in the petition that they had previously craved both the king and the Council for redress, without avail.

[276] The author of Britaines Buss had heard, but did not believe, stories of the “very foul and insolent dealing of their bussmen with our poor weak fishermen upon our coasts.” Tobias Gentleman, who admired the Dutch for their industry, said they scorned us only “for being so negligent of our profit, and careless of our fishing; and they do daily flout us that be the poor fishermen of England, to our faces at sea, calling to us and saying, ‘Ya English, ya zall, or oud scoue dragien,’ which in English is this: ‘You English, we will make you glad for to wear our old shoes.’” Englands Way to Win Wealth, p. 44.

[277] Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 375. A copy of the letter of the Lords of the Council, in the handwriting of Sir Julius Cæsar, is as follows: After our very hearty recommendations. Whereas his Majesty hath of late been moved vpon many consyderations arising from the complayntes of his subiects, to take some course of restraynt of many inconveniences depending vpon the excesse of libertie, w^ch is taken by the subiectes of forraigne princes and states to fish vppon his coast; By which, not onlie his owne ffishermen receive wrong in their fishing, but the verie Coast-Townes themselves are much decayed for lack of meanes to sett their people on work. To w^ch end hee had resolved to set forth a proclamation to th’effect of that w^ch is hereinclosed:

Fforasmuch as vppon perusall of some Treaties from King Henry 7_ths tyme till this daye betweene the Crowne of England and the house of Burgundy, we fynde certeyne clauses, by which there maye arise some question how farre any such Prohibition maye concurre with the practice of the same for so much as shall concerne the subiects of that Estate; Of w^ch particulars it is necessary that some deliberation were taken, beefore his Ma^tie proceeded to a generall execution of the same: We have thought good to requyre yow ioyntly and severally to peruse all those Treaties, and to consyder of them, and all other thinges, by w^ch the lawfullnes or vnlawfulnes maye appeare of this proceeding; Which being don wee shall expect some report from you for his Ma^ties better satisfaction.

Wherein wee doubt not but yow will proceede w^th all convenient expedition. And so will bid yow hartelie farewell.

Ffrome the Court at Whitehall first of Ffebruarie, 1606.
Mr Secretary Herbert.
Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer
Sr. Daniel Dun.
Sr. Thomas Crompton.
Sr. Christopher Perkins.

Yor Verie loving friendes, Subscribed by the
1. L. Chancellor.
2. L. Treasour.
3. L. Admirall.
4. The Earle of Worcester.
5. The Earle of Salisbury.
6. The Earle of Marr.
7. The L. Stanhop.

This copy is dated 1st February 1606, and the copy of the report of the Committee is also dated 1606, which would imply that the matter had been before the Privy Council in that year. It appears, however, from other evidence that Sir Julius Cæsar made a mistake in dating the copies.

[278] Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 377. In Sir Julius Cæsar’s handwriting, and endorsed, “A copy of a letter from Mr Secretary Herbert, myself, and others to the L^ds of the King’s P. Councell, touching the prohibition of strangers fishing on the coasts of England,” &c. This important paper reads as follow: Our humble duties dewe to y^r good LL^ps. We have according to y^r commandement, considered of the liberty w^ch is taken by the Subiectes of forreine Princes and States to fish vppon the kings Ma^ties coasts by w^ch not onely the English fishermen receive wrong in their fishing but the very coast townes themselves are much decayed for want of meanes to set their people on work; and we have considered likewise of the proclamation for the restraint of those many inconveniences depending vppon the excesse of such strangers fishing: We haue also pervsed the treaties frõ Henry the 7th time till this day betweene the Crowne of England and the House of Burgundy, and we have considered of them, and of all other thinges by w^ch (as wee conceave) the lawfulness or vnlawfulness may appeare of this proceeding. And are of opinion, that the K^s Ma^ty may w^thout breach of any treatyie nowe in force, or of the lawe, vppon the reasons specified in the proclamation sent vnto vs, restreine all strangers frõ fishing vppon his coasts w^thout license, in such moderation and after such convenient notice given thereof by publik proclamation, as his Ma^ty shall think fit.

And so we most humbly take our leaves. 14 febr. 1606.

Yo^r L^dships humbly at commandment,

J. Herbert. Jul. Cæsar. Daniel Dun. Christoph. Parkins. Tho. Crompton.

From the erasures and corrections ([see Fig. 6]) there seems little doubt that the paper is the original draft.

[279] Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 379. In Cæsar’s handwriting.

[280] See [Appendix F].

[281] Perhaps an oblique reference to Mare Liberum.

[282] State Papers, Dom., xlv. 24. Proc. Coll., No. 11.

[283] Salisbury to Cornwallis, 8th June 1609. Winwood’s Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reigns of Q. Elizabeth and K. James I., iii. 49.

[284] Muller, Mare Clausum, Bijdrage tot de Geschiedenis der Rivaliteit van Engeland en Nederland in de Zeventiende Eeuw, p. 52. Bosgoed, Bib. Pisc., 347. Resolutiën ... van Vergaderinge van de Heeren Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt, 2/12 June 1609. “Ter Generaliteyt’s lands recht voorstaan ter saake van het Engelsch placaat op het visschen op de kusten en zeeën van Groot Brittannien en Yrland.”

[285] “Ende oic Sijne authoriteyt eñ macht die hy in die See heeft voir de werelt manifest te maecken.”

[286] Sir George Carew to Salisbury, 20th June 1609. Acknowledges his lordship’s letter, “according the request made by the ffr. Amb^r for one year’s Respite longer for the ffishers of this nation,” and expressing his pleasure that other considerations of state so fell out as to give his Majesty cause to grant them that favour, “for it is like to increase the amity of the two crowns.”

[287] Caron to the States-General, 13/23 July 1609. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17, 677.

[288] Winwood to Salisbury, 6th September 1609. Memorials, iii. 64.

[289] The assize-herring was thus described by Skene, in De Verborum Significatione, annexed to the laws of Scotland, printed in 1597. “Assisa Halecum. The assise herring signifies ane certain measure and quantity of herring, quilk perteinis to the king as ane part of his custumes and annexed propriety, Jac. 6, p. 15, c. 237, for it is manifest that Hee shuld have of everie Boat that passis to the drave, and slayis herring, ane thousand herring of ilk tak that halds, viz. of Lambmes tak, of the Winter tak, and the Lentrone tak”—that is, of the summer, winter, and spring fishings. The assize-herrings appear to have been originally a contribution to the king’s kitchen. In 1526 James V. granted assize-herrings to Stuart of Ardgowane (Origines Parochiales Scotiæ, ii. 83). In 1593, in an Act of the Parliament of Scotland, entitled “Annexatioun of the Propertie of the Croun that wes nocht annext of befoir,” the assize-herrings were included (Jac. VI., 1593, c. 32. Acta, iv. 28), and an Act of 1597, entitled “Assysis hering may nocht be disponit,” ordained that no infeftment or alienation in few ferm or otherwise, and all rentals and dispositions whatsoever, past or to come, were to be null and void, because they pertained to the king as part of his customs and annexed property (Acta, iv. 131). Later the assize-herring was commuted into a money payment. An Act of Charles I. in 1641 (cap. 117), entitled “Act anent the Excise of Herring,” on the ground that the collection of the herrings was “very hard and difficult,” commuted the thousand herrings in the Firth of Lothian into a money payment of £6 Scots. In the eighteenth century, when it had been for the most part granted to individuals, or farmed, it took the form of a tax ranging from £4 Scots to £10 Scots per boat or per net, and was felt as a grievous burden. In the Firth of Forth each boat that was “size-worthy” (viz., that caught 3000 herrings during the whole season) had to pay ten shillings as “size-duty.” On the west coast it amounted to £10 Scots, or sixteen shillings and eightpence sterling, whether herrings were caught or not. With regard to the gross value of the tax, those of the great Dunbar fishings were leased in 1614 for five years for £1000 Scots, and a yearly rent of 2000 merks (Reg. Privy Council Scot., x. 282). In 1613 the value of the “duty of the tack of the assize-herrings,” amounting to fourteen lasts, which the Earl of Argyle rendered for Lochfyne, was estimated to be about £36 or £38 sterling (Melrose Papers, i. 124). In 1598 the assize-herring from the “east seas” was estimated to amount to 1120 dry “killing” (cod), which shows it was sometimes paid in other fish; in 1656-57 it was equal to £130 sterling (Chalmers, Caledonia, ii. 497); in 1629 Captain Mason claimed no less than £12,489, 7s. sterling as the value, with interest, of the assize-herrings of the Hebrides and North Isles granted to him by James for the years 1610-11, and not paid (State Papers, Dom., cliv. 13).

[290] Arguments for Collecting the Assyze herring from all Strangers fishing in the North Seas of Scotland, and Answers to some objections proponet be Sir Noel Caron. State Papers, Dom., xxxii. 31.

[291] Winwood, Memorials, iii. 105, 135, 146, 162. Muller, op. cit., 56.

[292] State Papers, Dom., xlvii. 111. “2. For that it is by the Lawe of nacions, no prince can Challenge further into the Sea then he can Com̃and w^th a Cannon except Gulfes w^thin their Land from one point to an other. 3. For that the boundlesse and rowlinge Seas are as Com̃on to all people as the ayre w_ch no prince can prohibite.” The paper is endorsed “Reasons vsed by the Hollanders for the Continuance of Fishing Contrarie to the proclamation made in May 1609 forbidding of strangers to fish,” and there is a note, apparently in Cæsar’s writing, saying, “This note was sent by Emanuell Demetrius who was present att the discourse.” It is misdated “Aug. 1609.” The endorsements appear to have been made after 1612, because at the end it is said, “It was answered by the late Lord Treasr. Salisburie att a hearing,” &c. A list is given of those present at the conference—viz., the Earls of Salisbury, Northampton, Nottingham, Suffolk, Shrewsbury, and Worcester, Mr Secretary Herbert and Sir Julius Cæsar, the “Standers by” being Sir T. Edmondes, Sir Daniel Dunn, Sir Christopher Perkins, Sir William Wade, and Mr Levinus Emanuell Demetrius,—probably the Levinus Muncke of the Dutch and other records. It is to be noted that the argument as to the limitation of the territorial sea by the range of guns was not contained in the instructions to the Dutch, as printed by Aitzema (Saken van Staet en Oorlogh, ii. 406) and Vreede (Vrijheid van Haringvaart, 6; compare Muller, Mare Clausum, 58, 91), and is not referred to by them in their Journal, where, however, they say they put forward “other reasons” than those they recite (Muller, Mare Clausum, 59). Van Meteren, whose work was published in 1614 (Historie der Nederlandscher ende haerder Naburen Oorlogen, &c., fol. 650), reports, however, that there was a great dispute as to how far a country’s limit might extend into the open sea, and the brief note of Levinus seems to be the only record of it. (“Sy seyden mede, dat het een groote dispute ware, hoeverre elcx Laudts Custen ofte Limiten inde groote wijde Zee Oceane mochte strecken.”) The document is of interest not only from the clear enunciation of the doctrine at so early a period, but because there are grounds for thinking that the idea may have originated in the fertile brain of Grotius. Competent Dutch authorities believe that Grotius either himself drew up the instructions dealing with the fishery question or was consulted in their preparation; and the fact that the argument is not contained in the official instructions scarcely weakens the supposition. It was of so drastic and novel a character to be urged against the pretensions of King James that the Dutch, anxious to conciliate him, may have followed a practice not uncommon in diplomacy, and kept it in the background only to be made use of if a suitable occasion arose. It is, moreover, known that Grotius had a close personal relationship with Elias van Oldenbarnevelt, the envoy to whom the fishery negotiations were specially entrusted.

[293] Vreede, Vrijheid van Haringvaart en Visscherij. Nota, in den Jare 1610, door de Nederlandsche Gezanten aan de Engelsche Regering ingediend (Bijdragen voor Vaderlandsche Geschiedenis en Oudheidkunde, Derde Deel. Arnhem, 1842). Muller, op. cit., 57; State Papers, Dom., xlvii. 111; Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 362. Vreede thinks it probable that the instructions were drawn up by Grotius; Muller believes that he was at all events consulted on the matter.

[294] State Papers, Dom., xlvii. 111. Vreede, op. cit. Muller, op. cit. Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 362. “Answers for prohibiting of strangers fishing upon the English coastes without the King’s license, 5th May 1610”—in the writing of Sir Julius Cæsar.

[295] “Niet door sollicitatiën van eenige courtisanen ofte hovelingen.”

[296] The Lords of the Council to Winwood, Memorials, iii. 166.

[297] State Papers, Dom., xlviii. 92.

[298] Sir Walter Cope to the king, State Papers, Dom., lxxi. 89. See note, p. 128.

[299] The Maintenance of Free Trade, 42 (1622). He mentions the reasons given by the powerful companies for their action, but it was caused by their fears for their monopolies.

[300] State Papers, Dom., lxxvii. 79. The Earl of Northampton to Sir Thomas Lake, 4th July 1613. Ibid., lxxiv. 23. The queen, who was fond of the banquet and the masque, was often in financial straits. Chamberlain wrote to Winwood in 1609 that she had been melancholy about her jointure, and that £3000 a-year had been added to it out of the customs, with a gift of £20,000 to pay her debts. Memorials, iii. 117.

[301] Gentleman, Englands Way to Win Wealth, &c.; E. S., Britaines Buss; The Trades Increase.

[302] In 1609 Sir Nicholas Hales told the king that he had been informed “the Hollanders were petitioners to the Queen to grant them a term of years in the seas for the fishing of herring, cod, and ling.” State Papers, Dom., xlv. 23.

[303] Wotton to Sec. Winwood, Hague, 20th March 1614.

[304] Archbishop Abbot and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere to Thomas Wilson, 24th August 1614. State Papers, Dom., lxxvii. 80. It is endorsed, “The letter to me, 24th Aug. 1614, sending for me from Harford and for the transcribing an abstract of all things out of my papers which might concern his Majesty’s jurisdiction on the sea, which I did and delivered it to Mr Attorney-General, Sir Francis Bacon, by the commandment of the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

[305] Caron to States-General, 27 Aug./6 Sept. 1614. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17, 677, H.

[306] Muller, op. cit., 91, 92.

[307] 26th September 1614.

[308] Records of the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, ii. 455. Anstruther Easter, one of the Fife villages, asked that the costs (£400 Scots) should be reimbursed to them for obtaining the decree against Mason “for exacting of thame certane excyse hering and fishes at the fishing in Orknay and Zetland.”

[309] State Papers and Correspondence of Thomas, Earl of Melros, i. 130.

[310] Reg. Privy Council Scot., x. 231. Rec. Convent. Roy. Burghs Scot., ii. 540.

[311] The Lords of the Council to the king, 17th May 1614. Melrose Papers, i. 130. “It wes fundin,” wrote the Lords, “by vniforme voices and consent, without ony kynd of contradictioun, that the assise dewytie aucht onlie to be payit for the hering brought freshe and greene to land, and that the hering whilkis ar maid, saltit, and barrellit vpoun the sea, and maid reddye for the transporte, hes nevir bene in vse to pay ony dewytie.”

[312] Loc. cit. The “patent” was the treaty of 1594. [See p. 81]. It may be mentioned that Mason, in his petition to Charles I. ([see p. 153] note), stated that in 1611 he collected “some part” of the assize-herrings, but that upon the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth (February 1613) “the States ambassador made suit to the king for the remission of the said assize-herrings due by their nation, which was granted.” We have discovered no other evidence of this. Loose statements were often made on the subject by English writers and certain foreign authors, as Rapin (Hist, d’Anglet., vii. 58), and Wagenaar (Vaderl. Hist., ix. 318) following him, that the Dutch agreed to pay an annual sum for liberty to fish on the British coasts. The error was elaborated by others, as by Lediard in his great work (Naval History of England, i. 420), who says: “In the year 1608 (sic) King James published a proclamation prohibiting all foreign nations to fish on the coast of Great Britain. This prohibition, though general, was designed against the Dutch; and it occasioned the Treaty the year following whereby they engaged to pay an annual sum for leave to fish—an evident acknowledgment of the English Dominion of the Seas.”

[313] Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs Scot., ii. 323, 350, 354, 374.

[314] Winwood to Carleton, 14/24 September 1616. Letters from and to Sir Dudley Carleton, Knt., during his Embassy in Holland; from January 1615/6 to December 1620, p. 52.

[315] Caron to the States-General, 25 Aug./4 Sept. 1616. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, J, fol. 152. In an account of the oppressions of Lord Robert Stewart in the Orkneys and Shetlands in the sixteenth century, it is stated that that nobleman laid heavy tolls upon the Dutch fishermen and the Norwegian traders. In 1575 the inhabitants complained that he compelled “the dogger boats and other fishers of this realm to pay to him great toll and taxis bye auld use and wont, to wit, ilk boat ane angel noble, ane hundreth fish, and twa bolls salt” (Oppressions of the Sixteenth Century in the Islands of Orkney and Zetland, xlviii. 4). It appears from a complaint of merchants of Bremen, in 1614, that it had been a custom “past memory of man” for each ship arriving at the Orkneys to pay six angels and one dollar for ground-leave and water-leave (Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., x. 247); and the Dutch are said to have given to the agent of the Earl of Orkney a barrel of salt for his “oversight” of each ship, and to have offered the Earl for each ship “an angell and ane barrell of birskate (biscuit) bread,” while he demanded “no less than ane double angell or ane Rose noble at the least” (MSS. Advoc. Lib., 31. 2. 16).

[316] [See p. 81]. The treaty did not contain any stipulation of the kind; and, moreover, the Scottish copy was then amissing.

[317] Muller, Mare Clausum, 107. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, J, fol. 153 et seq. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 410. Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. 605, 608.

[318] By the Scots Act, 1 James I., May 1424, regarding the “custome of horse, nolt, scheepe, had furth of the realm, and of herring,” it was ordained that the following should be paid: “of ilk thousand of fresche herring sauld, of the Sellar one penny, and of ilk last of herring, tane be Scottis-men barrelled, foure schillinges, of ilk last be strangeris taken, sexe schillinges.”

[319] Caron to the States-General, 25 Aug./4 Sept., 12/22 Sept., 19/29 Sept. 1616. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, J, fol. 152-166. The statement of Lennox that the tax was a barrel of herrings or ten shillings agrees with the statements of the Dutch skippers, who, however, added twelve cod-fish (“Een tonne harinck van elcke buÿsse oft een Angelott daervooren met twelff cabillauwen”).

[320] Carleton, Letters, 156, 157. Muller, op. cit., 110. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, J, fol. 213b. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 410. State Papers, Dom. Collection, Charles II., vol. 339.

[321] Carleton, Letters, 156. Caron to the States-General, 3/13 Aug. 1617; Carleton to the States-General, 27 Aug./6 Sept. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, J, fol. 210, 213. State Papers, Dom. Collection, Charles II., vol. 339.

[322] Carleton, Letters, 168, 169, 172, 176, 186. Muller, op. cit., 111.

[323] Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 398, 400. “The State of the Case between his Majesty and the States of the United Provinces, touching the remanding to his Majesty of a Delinquent,” 19th November 1617. In Cæsar’s handwriting. It describes the circumstances of Brown’s capture. The counsel whose opinion was obtained were “W. Byrde (? Sir Wm. Bird, Dean of the Arches), H. Marten, and Hy. Styward.” “Brown, his Majesty’s subject of the Kingdom of Scotland, was by authority from that State sent in a pinnace of the King to the subjects of the United Provinces, who were then fishing for herrings upon the coasts of Scotland, to demand a certain acknowledgment claimed by his Majesty, as due unto him in the right of that crown;” that “while delivering his errand he was arrested and carried prisoner to Holland by the Dutch commander, who pretended he had warrant and commission from the Lords the States so to do; that his Majesty (having represented this indignity by his ambassador there to the Lords the States, the latter disavowed the act of the captain) requireth the offender there, to be remanded unto himself here to receive as to justice shall appertain. The Question—Whether this offender ought to be sent herein to his Majesty as is required. Answer—There are good authorities that if a subject of one State commit a heinous crime within the territory of another State (though against a private person), the subject so offending ought to be remitted to the place where the crime was committed, if it be required.” There were also opinions to the contrary, but “two very particular circumstances about this offence seem necessarily to enforce the remission of the Dutch captain to his Majesty (1) taken from the person of Brown, who was a public messenger sent by the State of Scotland on the affairs of the Prince, and ought to have been inviolable by the Law of Nations, and therefore a wrong and abuse done to him was contra jus gentium; (2) taken from the manner of the wrong done, which was nomine publico—viz., by a pretended commission from the Lords the States.”

[324] Carleton, Letters, 219-263. Muller, op. cit., 113.

[325] Crail, Anstruther, and Pittenweem, in Fife, and Musselburgh and Fisherrow, on the opposite side of the Firth of Forth.

[326] 12th March 1618. Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. 329.

[327] Record imperfect.

[328] Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. 328, 330.

[329] Carleton, Letters, 259.

[330] King James to Sir D. Carleton, 4th May 1618. “For the other part, which is y^e ancient custom alleadged by O^r Subjects that they (the Dutch) should not fish within Kenning of Land, of which they make shew to be ignorant, and would understand what is meant by it: you may say that O^r Subjects do conceave that Custom to be that no strangers should fish either within the Creeks of O^r Land or within a Kenning of the Land as Seamen do take a kenning, and insisting upon this interpretation of O^r Subjects’ meaning, you shall observe curiously their reply, and what scope and liberty they do limit to themselves in their fishing, and whether they understand that they may fish where they list, near or far off, or that they may be confined to any reasonable bounds, for thereupon will depend a great part of that resolution which may be taken hereafter in a matter of so great moment as this is, and the answer you shall receive you may either advertise by writing, or bring with you, as you shall find O^r service to require.” State Papers, Dom. Collections, Chas. II., vol. 339. In a later communication to the States-General Carleton described the land-kenning thus: “Ce qui est une limite bien entendue par gens de Marine, et appellée en ces quartiers là The Kenning of the Land, et icy de kennis vant landt.” Dr P. P. C. Hoek informs me that “het land verkennen” is even now the technical Dutch expression when a sailor comes near the coast without knowing at what point he approaches it.

[331] Muller, Mare Clausum, 114.

[332] “Ane True Relatione of the Greifs and Wrangs qlks the Inhabitants of the Isles of Orknay and Schetland and Others his Ma^ties Subjects Fishars within ye Kingdome of Scotland sustains be the Hollanders and Hamburghgers and wha within these few Zears are associat to the Hollanders in the Fishing within his Ma^ties Seas in Scotland.” MSS. Advoc., 31. 2. 16. It may be noted that the custom referred to in the last paragraph was of Scandinavian origin.

[333] The Council to the king, 4th April 1618. Melrose Papers, i. 306, 307.

[334] 5th June 1618, Groot Placaet-Boeck, inhoudende de Placaten ende Ordonnantien van de H.M. Heeren Staten Generael der Vereenighde Nederlanden, &c., i. 707. In Fraser’s Memorials of the Earls of Haddington (ii. 66) there is printed the copy which King James sent to Lord Binning. Sir Thomas Hamilton became Lord Binning in 1613, the Earl of Melrose in 1619, and the Earl of Haddington in 1627.

[335] Answer by the States-General of the United Provinces to the Propositions of the Ambassador of James VI. relative to the Herring Fishery on the Coast of Scotland, 5th June 1618. Fraser, Memorials, ii. 65. Resol., St.-Gen., 5th, 6th June. Muller, op. cit., 115.

[336] The king to Lord Binning, 11th June 1618. Fraser, Memorials, ii. 85. Nothing seemed to be known of this treaty. James complained that the States were not explicit. “This pointe” about the treaty, he wrote, “they leave obscure, seeing they neyther expresse which of our predecessouris it was, neyther whether he were our predecessour in Scotlande or Englande.”

[337] Carleton to Naunton, 19th August 1618.

[338] The king to the Privy Council, 29th August 1618. Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. 440.

[339] P. 131.

[340] Hakluyt’s Voyages, i. 246.

[341] M’Pherson, Annals of Commerce, ii. 213.

[342] Muller, op. cit., 118. In a memorandum drawn up by Sir John Coke in 1625, the Dutch are said to have first “intruded” in 1613. State Papers, Dom., Chas. I., dxxii. 136. See also Brit. Mus. Lansdowne MSS., 142, fol. 387 et seq.

[343] Earl of Northampton to King James, August 2, 1612. State Papers, Dom., lxx. 23.

[344] Chamberlain to Carleton, 27th October 1613. Ibid., lxxiv. 89. M’Pherson, Annals, ii. 273.

[345] M’Pherson, Annals, ii. 274. Winwood, Memorials, iii. 480. M’Pherson speaks of fifteen Dutch, French, and Biscay whalers and four English “interlopers.” Muller (Mare Clausum, 120), quoting from a contemporary Dutch account, mentions three Biscayers, three Spaniards, two French, one Dunkirker, and two Hollanders. Both the Spanish and French Governments protested against the action of the English vessels. Digby wrote from Madrid (4th September 1613) that the English merchants at St Sebastian were threatened in person and goods on the return of the Spanish ships which had been prevented from fishing at “Greenland,” and they were forced to remain indoors.

[346] A Trew Declaracion of the Discoverie of the mayne Landes, Islandes, Seas, Ports, Havens, and Creekes, lyenge in the North-West, North, and North-East partes of the World, State Papers, Dom., lxxvi. 51. Muller, op. cit., 121, 123. Carleton, Letters, 7.

[347] Groot Placaet-Boeck, i. 670. Aitzema, Saken van Staet en Oorlogh, ii. 336. State Papers, Dom., xcix. 36.

[348] Ibid., xcix. 36-41. M’Pherson, Annals, ii. 287. Muller, op. cit., 131.

[349] Carleton, Letters, 312.

[350] They were Johan van Goch, Ewout van der Dussen for Gelderland and Holland, and Joachim Liens for Zealand. Holland had at first intended to send Grotius. Ibid., 306.

[351] Among the Cæsar papers in the British Museum (Lansd. MSS., 142, fol. 383) there is one dated 23rd December 1618, containing extracts “noted out of a book called Mare Liberum sive de Jure quod Batavia, &c., Lugd. Bat., 1609,” together with notes from Welwood’s De Dominio Maris, answering the assertions in that book. It was doubtless a memorandum to be used in the conferences with the Dutch ambassadors; and on the back of it are scrawled jottings difficult to decipher, headed, “The Kinges Speeche touching the Dutchemen’s fishing upon the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland,” to the following effect: “1. The treaty never so opportune as now when they fearest it most and their State least settled; in ill terms with France and Spain. 2. In the East Indies we can match them, and so in the north voyage (Greenland ?). The French King taketh part with Barnevelt. The King of Spain prepareth against Venice. What the King of Denmark, the Princes of the Union, the ... and the rest of the Protestants think of any falling out with the Low Countries.” It may be noted that this memorandum contains no reference to Selden’s Mare Clausum, which the author stated was submitted to the king this year ([see p. 366]).

[352] The king to the Council, 7th November 1618. Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. 631.

[353] Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. 462.

[354] Lord Binning to the king, 27th November 1618. Melrose Papers, ii. 631. The statement was to the same effect as that previously referred to. A Mr Bruce of Shetland stated that while of old the Hollanders used to carry on the greater part of their fishery forty miles and more from the land, yet they came usually within fourteen miles before shooting their nets; that in the time of the late Earl of Orkney they came still nearer, within six or seven miles; while now they came so close that their nets were sometimes torn on the rocks. Sir Gideon Murray to Lord Binning, 26th November 1618. MSS. Advoc., 31. 2. 16.

[355] Earl of Dunfermline to Lord Binning, 27th November 1618. MSS. Ibid. “Concerning the Hollanders fishing in our seas,” he said, “for all the search and tryall I have made, whilk has been my uttermost, I can wryte or send to you little more nor before, in effect nothing.” The Constable of Dundee searched all his records, the records of the Admiralty were explored, and all those in Edinburgh Castle and in the city archives, as well as many in the keeping of private persons, and every one likely to know anything about the matter was communicated with; but “nothing to the purpose” was found, “nor no recorde of any wryte made for the Hollanders’ use in 1594 or any other time.” The “wryte” of 1594, it is to be remembered, was a long treaty made by James himself. Copies were ultimately discovered of the treaties of 1531 and 1541, but nothing to the point. Copies of the treaty and of other documents referring to it were obtained, apparently from Holland, in 1619, and were ordered to be preserved in his Majesty’s Register in Edinburgh Castle (Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xii. 22); but in 1630 and 1631, when they were again wanted, they could not be found. State Papers, Dom., Chas. I., ccvi. 46.

[356] This referred to the licenses to certain French boats to fish on the Sowe in the Channel. [See p. 65].

[357] “Zijne ma^t was een coninck van de grootste insulen van de werelt ende seer wel wiste het rechte dat hij hadde opte custen van sijne drij coninckrijcken.” Commissioners to States-General, (24 Dec. 1618)/(3 Jan. 1619). Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, J, fol. 372.

[358] Note of Treatie with the Commissioners of the Estates annent the Fishing. Dec. 1618. MSS. Advoc., 31. 2. 16.

[359] Naunton to Carleton, 21st December 1618.

[360] In apprehending Brown, p. 171. Grotius was then in prison, and known to be the author of Mare Liberum.

[361] State Papers, Dom., xc. 65.

[362] The Dutch Commissioners to the States-General, (29 Nov.,)/(9 Dec.,) 17/27 Dec. 1618; (24 Dec. 1618,)/(3 Jan. 1619), 3/13 Jan., (23 Jan.)/(2 Feb.) 1619. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, J, fol. 364, 367, 370, 374, 380. Muller, op. cit., 140, 147, 148, 153. Aitzema, Saken van Staet, ii. 402. Carleton, Letters, 326. MSS. Advoc., 31. 2. 16. State Papers, Dom. Collection, Chas. II., vol. 339, p. 351, 361, 369, &c.

[363] The Dutch Commissioners to the States-General, (30 Jan.)/(9 Feb.) 1619. Ibid., 387. Naunton to Carleton, 21st January 1619. Carleton, Letters. Justice, A General Treatise of the Dominion and Laws of the Sea, 179. The States were desired “to cause proclamation to be made, prohibiting any of their subjects to fish within fourteen miles of his Majesty’s coasts this year, or in any time hereafter, until order be taken by commissioners to be authorised on both sides, for a final settling of the main business.”

[364] [P. 223].

[365] Carleton to the king, 6th February 1619.

[366] Muller, op. cit., 156. “So verre van ’t Lant souden blijven als men met oogen konde afsien.”

[367] 2nd June 1619. Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, V. ii. 333.

[368] The English, who were the first to carry on the whale-fishing at Spitzbergen, had taken possession of the best fishing-places: whales then abounded in the bays close to the shore, where the “cookeries” were erected.

[369] Muller, op. cit., 160. State Papers, Dom., cv. 9. The Muscovy Company, now supported by the East India Company, fitted out nine ships and two pinnaces for the Spitzbergen fishery in 1619, but the voyage was unfortunate. After carrying on the fishing for a few years longer the company abandoned it, though it was carried on on a small scale by other English vessels, mostly from Hull. The Dutch, on the other hand, prosecuted the fishing with great vigour and success under the protection of men-of-war, and they rapidly made it one of the most profitable industries of the Low Countries. A full account is given by Zorgdrager, an old whaling captain, who wrote in the early part of the eighteenth century (Bloeijende opkomst der aloude en hedendaagsche Groenlandsche Visscherij). The Dutch factory on Amsterdam island grew to a village called Smeerenburg or Oil-town, which was fortified in 1636. In those early years the whales were taken by the ships’ boats, which lay moored in the bays; later, as the whales got scarce, they were flensed at sea and the blubber carried home. This was the case before F. Martens visited the island in 1671.

[370] The king to the Privy Council of Scotland, 16th June 1619. Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. 607.

[371] Since the records of the Scottish Council are silent as to the steps taken to collect the assize-herrings in 1616 and 1617 and the capture of John Brown in the latter year, while the Dutch and English records are equally mute as to the proceedings in 1618 and 1619, it at first appeared that a mistake might have been made in the dates of the former, a view that seemed to be supported by the remark in the first letter of the king to the Council, “to the intent that the Estaitis may not alledge that no suche dewteis had bene demandit”—a curious statement in face of the fact that Brown had been carried to Holland the year before. But the late Professor Masson, who was the editor of the Register of the Privy Council, obligingly informed me that the documents are the original Acta and not copies; and among the English State Papers is a letter dated from Holyrood House, on 10th July 1619, in which it is stated that Captain Murray had been sent to claim the assize-herrings from the “Flemings” fishing in the northern seas, and that he was well equipped to secure his safety if his demands were refused (Raith to Abercromby, State Papers, Dom., cix. 127). The phrase in the king’s letter may be explained by the fact that the duty in 1616 and 1617 was demanded by the Duke of Lennox, to whom the assize-herrings had been granted.

[372] Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. 605, 608.

[373] See [Appendix G]. Fenton was one of those who were on intimate terms with Ben Jonson during the poet’s visit to Scotland. Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xi. p. clxvii.

[374] Op. cit., 606.

[375] Op. cit., 593, 603.

[376] Footnote, p. 195.

[377] Carleton, Letters, 437, 447, 448, 451. Bosgoed, Bib. Pisc., 352. The sum voted in 1620 was 22,000 gulden; in the following years it varied between 23,000 and 36,000 gulden.

[378] Muller, op. cit., 172, 173. Aitzema, Saken van Staet, i. 13, 17.

[379] Muller, op. cit., 174, 178.

[380] “Ghy sijt sangsues, bloetsuygers van mijn rijck, ghy treckt het bloet van mijne Ondersaeten ende souckt mij te ruineren.”

[381] Muller, op. cit., 191, 194, 203. Aitzema, i. 191, 193. Journal van de Ambassade van den Heere van Sommelsdyck naer Engelant, 1621-1623, Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 22,866.

[382] 2/12 May 1620. Verboth van Haringh binnen de Klippen van Yerlandt, Hitlandt, oft Noorwegen te vangen. Groot Placaet-Boeck, i. 752.

[383] 2/12 June 1623, Groot Placaet-Boeck, i. 708. Muller, op. cit., 206.

[384] Rec. Convent. Roy. Burghs, iii. 142. Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., xiii. 308, 317.

[385] George Lord Carew to the Secretary of State, Calvert, 8th March 1623. State Papers, Dom., cxxxix. 66. The Lord Mayor to Lords Grandison, Carew, and Chichester, 27th March, 3rd April 1623. Ibid., cxl. 47, cxlii. 21.

[386] A Project for the Encouragement of Fishing by passing an Act of Parliament for Building fishing-vessels, to be protected by a Fleet Royall of 20 ships, the expense to be defrayed by a Tribute of every Tenth Fish. Ibid., clvii. 46.

[387] A Discourse of the Invention of Ships. Collected Works, viii. 326.

[388] Naval Tracts, in Churchill’s Collection of Voyages, iii. 220, 224.

[389] Cecil to Parry, 10th June 1603. Foreign Papers, France, vol. 129. It is endorsed “Souverainty of ye Seas, 1603. Monsr. de Vicque beares ye armes of france in Dover road.” See also Sully, Memoires des Sages et royales Oeconomics d’Estat, ii. 173, and Kermaingant, Le Droit des Gens Maritimes, 3.

[390] Monson’s Naval Tracts, ibid., 222. The Spaniards to whom Monson refers were no doubt the troops which Don Louis Fajardo had attempted to carry to Flanders when he was attacked by the Dutch and took refuge in Dover. Monson, it may be said, was in receipt of a secret pension of £350 per annum from Spain. Gardiner, Hist., i. 215.

[391] Loccenius, De Jure Maritimo et Navali, 48.

[392] Thus in the Earl of Warwick’s voyage, in 1627, four vessels “stood with their forefoot and very earnestly” tried to weather the king’s ships off Falmouth, among them being a French man-of-war. The English then shot at the latter, and “soo brought him by ye lee” (State Papers, Dom., lxxix. 17). In 1637 Captain Straddling explained how he compelled Dutch vessels to take in their flags, lower their top-sails, and “lie by the lee” (Ibid., ccclxi. 41). In the historic encounters with the Dutch in 1652 the same rule was shown. When Captain Young met the Dutchmen on 12th May ([see p. 402]), their admiral came under his lee and took down his flag, but their vice-admiral, “contrary to navigation with us in the narrow seas, came to the windward of us” (French Occurrences, Brit. Mus., E, 665, 6). So also when Blake met Tromp, he “fired two shots thwart Tromp’s forefoot for him to strike his flag and bear down to leeward, and he taking no notice of it, the general ordered the third shot at Tromp’s flag, which went through his main top-sails” (Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 11,684, fol. 5b).

[393] The Lords of the Admiralty to Plumleigh. State Papers, Dom., clvii. fol. 121.

[394] Meadows, Observations concerning the Dominion and Sovereignty of the Seas, 2.

[395] State Papers, Dom., Chas. I. ccxxix. 79.

[396] 17th October 1632. The Earl of Stirling’s Register of Royal Letters, ii. 627.

[397] State Papers, Dom., cxcix. 51.

[398] State Papers, Dom., cc. 5.

[399] Ibid., ccviii. 27.

[400] State Papers, Dom., dxxiii. 74, dxxix. 73. The proposal to utilise the tenth herring for maintaining a navy had been long before put forward by Dr Dee. [See p. 101].

[401] The other half were exported as red-herrings.

[402] State Papers, Dom., 1629, clii. 57.

[403] Mason, who was intimately associated with the fishery scheme, proposed that the island should be purchased by a company of naturalised Scotsmen, and fishing stations established; and later he recommended the purchase of the island by the king, leaving complete freedom of fishery to all Scotsmen. Sir William Monson urged that a “government” should be established in the island as well as in Orkney and Shetland, and also a principal town; and that the children of the islanders should be taught English, and “correspondence” between the inhabitants and the Highlanders hindered, “considering the danger of their too great friendship.” State Papers, Dom., 1629, clii. 66, 67, 68. The subject of the Earl of Seaforth’s lease and the fishings is dealt with by Mackenzie, History of the Outer Hebrides, 290 et seq.

[404] State Papers, Dom., clii. 63, 71; clxxx. 97. Dymes’ report is printed in full by Mackenzie (op. cit., 591). The master of one of the Dutch busses, who transported Dymes from Lewis to the mainland, told him that the herrings were in such great abundance that they were sometimes constrained to cast them into the sea again, they having more in half their nets than they were able to save, “and he was of opinion that if there had bene a thousand Busses more there was fish enough for them all.”

[405] Rec. Convent. Roy. Burghs Scot., iii. 257, 259, 291. The arguments against the Dutch were elaborated in a long document, which concluded thus: “Lastly, theis Netherlanders greatnes, strength, wealth, arts, and every happines doe originally proceede from their fishing in his Majesty’s seas of England, Scotland, and Ireland.”

[406] P. 77.

[407] State Papers, Dom., clii. 63; clxv. 201; clxxx. 100. Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iii. 300 et seq.

[408] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 220b. Captain John Mason, who was afterwards appointed “Admiral” of the busses belonging to the society, was apparently originally intended to lay the matter before the Council. The draft, in Coke’s handwriting, is entitled, “Instructions for Captain John Mason employed by his Majesty to treat with the Lordes of the Privie Council of Scotland about the erection of a general fishing,” and is among the State Papers, Dom., clxxx. 101.

[409] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 221. This ambitious scheme included the building of 200 busses of from 30 to 50 tons each, “for a considerable beginning,” besides the employment of the fishing vessels already engaged on the coast which were of suitable size. These were computed to number about 100 in Scotland and 200 in England (employed at Newfoundland and the north seas), while at least 300 “coasters” from Berwick to the Thames might also be made available; and it was suggested that more might be built by the company “in every town,” or bought from the Dutch. It was estimated that the cost of building and equipping the 200 busses, including casks, salt, wages, &c., would be £222,586, and that the total return the first year would amount to £388,000, made up as follows: (1) summer herring fishing, 20,000 lasts at £10, equal to £200,000; (2) winter herring fishing, 12,000 lasts at £12, equal to £144,000; (3) cod and ling fishing in spring, 1,200,000 fish at £30 a thousand, and 600 tuns of oil at £13, 6s. 8d., equal to £44,000. Several calculations were made about this time as to the cost of equipping herring-busses, the profits to be derived from their use, and the loss to the realm by the transport of cured fish by the Dutch; Monson put the latter loss at £621,750 per annum. State Papers, Dom., clii. 70, clxxx. 99, ccvi. 52; MSS. Advoc. Lib., 31. 2. 16; Brit. Mus. Sloane MSS., 26. The latter is a “Discourse on the Hollanders’ Trade of Fishing,” by Sir Robert Mansel, of the usual type.

[410] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 225. The committee consisted of fifteen peers, several bishops, and a large number of commoners. Mason, who had accompanied Sir William Alexander to Scotland, reported to Coke that the Council gathered in the Lord Chancellor’s chamber, “he lying sick of the gout,” to hear the king’s letter read, and that Mr John Hay “violently opposed” the scheme and attacked the Earl of Seaforth for bringing in the Hollanders. State Papers, Dom., clxxii. 19.

[411] At this time the herring-fishing on the west coast of Scotland, which began on 1st July and continued till Christmas, employed from 800 to 1500 fishing-boats of from 5 to 6 tons each, besides about 200 “cooper” boats of about 12 tons, which carried casks and salt and brought back cured herrings to the burghs: about 6000 “seamen” were employed in this industry. The herring-fishing on the east coast was for the most part carried on at Dunbar—as many as 20,000 people sometimes congregating there—and in the deep water where the Dutch fished in July, August, and September. There was also an important winter fishing for herrings in the Firth of Forth in November, and at the North Isles from 1st October till Christmas. The “keeling” or cod-fishing at the mouth of the Clyde in February, March, and April employed about 120 of the largest boats; on the east coast this method of fishing was carried on from 1st April till 24th June.

[412] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 226. Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iii. 322, 323. The Earl of Seaforth, writing to the Earl of Carlisle on August 17th, said that the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Treasurer had left no argument unuttered which might induce their countrymen, and especially the burghs, to concur in the king’s desire about the fishing. The burghs would not admit any association either with countrymen or strangers; “they like not,” he said, “that noblemen or gentry should understand matters of industry,” and they would do what they could to move the king to delay. State Papers, Dom., clxxii. 78. In another account of the proceedings of the Convention, it is said the burghs claimed as “absolutely theirs” the fishing within bays and lochs, and at sea for a distance of “two kennings” from the shore, and stated that they would admit no partners, either natives or strangers; that buss-fishing was distinguished by them to be “without two kennings from the land”; and they would not “on any condition” allow any busses to participate in the “land fishing” within two kennings, or to land at all, but only to “make” their fish (cure them) on shipboard, as the “Flemings” did. It is added that those who would have hazarded some means in the project were “absolutely discouraged” by the attitude of the burghs. Ibid., ccvi. 45.

[413] Acta Parl. Scot., iv. 369. Statutes of the Realm, 1 Jac. I., c. 2. Reg. Privy Counc. Scot., vi. Nat. MSS. of Scot., iii. No. 85. State Papers, Dom., 1604, x. No. 1. It is unfortunate that the reasonable delimitation of the territorial fishing waters proposed in the treaty was not carried out, for there can be little doubt that had it been it would have become recognised by other nations, and would have continued to the present day.

[414] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 228, 230. The Earl of Stirling’s Register of Royal Letters, ii. 478.

[415] The commissioners were the Earl of Morton (Lord High Treasurer), the Earl of Monteith (President of the Privy Council), the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earls of Roxburgh and Carrick, Sir William Alexander, Mr John Hay, and Mr George Fletcher.

[416] Among other things, the commissioners were instructed to represent to the king the prejudice which Scotland sustained by the use of the name “Great Britain” in the royal patents, writs, and records relating to Scotland, for, they reminded him, “there was no union as yet with England”; and Charles was to be requested to renew his seals under the terms Carolus Dei gratia Scotiæ, Angliæ, Franciæ, et Hiberniæ Rex. It must be remembered that at this time the Scottish aristocracy were smarting under the defeat which the king had recently inflicted on them in connection with the Act of Revocation, by which most of the church, property in the hands of laymen was re-annexed to the crown.

[417] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 232.

[418] Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iii. 325. The foreigners from Hamburg and Bremen were chiefly engaged in trade and barter.

[419] Fœdera, xix. 211. State Papers, Dom., clxxxvii. 46. The commission was dated 8th December 1630, and the other commissioners were the Earls of Salisbury, Dorset, and Carlisle, Viscounts Wimbledon and Wentworth, Sir John Coke, Sir Francis Cottingham, and Sir William Alexander, who was Secretary for Scotland.

[420] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 235. Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 526. State Papers, Dom., clxxxviii. 72. In the record of the burghs the distance from the shore on the east coast, at the Orkneys and Shetlands, and on the north coast, is given as forty miles; but as the original records of the Convention between 1631 and 1649 were lost, and that printed is from an abstract prepared in 1700, it appears that an error was made in the transcribing.

[421] The Duke of Lennox had some time before this proposed the formation of a fishery society for the purpose.

[422] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236. The Act referred to was passed in 1607 by the Scottish Parliament, but it was to be inoperative until a corresponding Act was passed by the Parliament of England, which was not done.

[423] State Papers, Dom., cxci. 7. Memorandum, dated 11th May 1631, by Secretary Coke, on “Matters in difference betwixt the English and Scottish Commissioners concerning the fishing.” From this paper it appears that the Scottish commissioners made the most of points relating to naturalisation; they objected to the natives being employed as fishermen by the association, and they would say nothing about the proportion of busses that might be set forth in Scotland.

[424] Stirling Letters, ii. 538, 544. Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236. Charles, it will be observed, mentions 15 miles. The miles stated in the Scottish documents were Scots miles of 5929·5 imperial feet, 10 Scots miles being equal to nearly 11¼ imperial miles; the extent of the reserved waters was therefore very nearly 15¾ imperial miles (15·72).

[425] Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 534.

[426] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 238.

[427] Rec. Conv. Roy. Burghs, iv. 534, 535.

[428] “Whereat we ourselff for the most part were present,”—king to Council, 15th July 1632. Stirling Letters, ii. 604.

[429] State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 46.

[430] State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 50.

[431] State Papers, Dom., cciii. 53, 54, 19th November 1631. The draft appears to have been prepared and altered entirely by the king himself.

[432] State Papers, Dom., ccxxix. 78, 83, 87, 89.

[433] The king to the Council, 15th July 1632. Stirling Letters, ii. 605, 606, 617. Acta Parl. Scot., v. 245.

[434] The Act specified by the king was passed in 1491, but he seems rather to have been referring to the Act 6 James III., c. 48. “That Lordes, Barrones and Burrowes gar make Schippes, Busches, and greate Pinck-boates with Nettes,” which was passed in 1471, “for the common good of the realm and the great increase of riches,” to be brought from other countries in exchange for fish exported. The Act of James IV., “Anent the makeing of Schippes and Busches on the quhilk all Idle Men suld Laboure,” was an early attempt to carry out the policy advocated by English writers in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It enacted that ships and busses, not under twenty tons burden, should be built in all the burghs and towns of Scotland, provided with mariners and nets: and power was given to compel “idle men” to man them.

[435] State Papers, Dom., ccvi. 47. “What is required from the Lords and Gentry of Scotland towards the fishing.”

[436] Acta Parl. Scot., v. 236.

[437] State Papers, Dom., ccxxi. 1 ; Acta Parl. Scot., v. 239.

[438] The councillors nominated by Charles were, for England and Ireland, Lord Weston, the High Treasurer (created Earl of Portland in February of the following year), the Earl of Arundel, the Earl of Pembroke, Viscount Savage, Lord Cottingham, and Secretary Coke; for Scotland, the Earl of Morton, the High Treasurer, the Earl of Stratherne and Monteith, President of the Privy Council, the Earl of Roxburgh, Viscount Stirling, Mr John Hay, and Mr George Fletcher.

[439] Martin, who visited the Hebrides about the year 1695, saw the foundation of a house, which, the natives told him, had been built by the Society as a store for salt and casks, on Hermetra, a small island in the Sound of Harris; and he saw a similar relic on a small island called Vacksay, in Loch Maddy. He was informed by the natives that “in the memory of some yet alive,” as many as 400 sail had been loaded with herrings in Loch Maddy in one season: at the time of his visit the fishing had been abandoned, though herrings were plentiful. A Description of the Westerne Islands of Scotland, pp. 51, 54, 55.

[440] Simon Smith, who was latterly Secretary to Pembroke’s association, afterwards stated that the Society had attained to the proper cure of herrings, and was likely to have been ultimately successful. This opinion was not shared by Dutch writers. The author of The True Interest and Political Maxims of the Republic of Holland, published under the name of De Witt, says the herrings the Society sent to Dantzic in 1637 and 1638, though caught at the same time and place as the Hollanders’ herrings, were “esteemed naught to the very last barrel”; and a contemporary author, Meynert Semeyns, a skipper of Enkhuisen, in a work written in 1639 (Een corte beschryvinge over de Haring-visscherye in Hollandt), says the same thing. “The Dutch,” he boasted, “catch more herrings and prepare them better than any other nation ever will; and the Lord has, by means of the herring, made Holland an exchange and staple-market for the whole of Europe.” No other nation, he added, ever tried the industry but to their loss, and the example adduced was the Society’s herrings sent to Dantzic.

[441] In August and September 1633, before the Council had met (busses having been purchased on the strength of subscriptions promised), two busses were taken by Dutch men-of-war and one by a Dunkirker. The former captures were doubtless made because the Dutch fishermen were acting contrary to the fishery laws of the United Provinces in taking service with aliens, and they were promptly disavowed by the States-General and the busses restored. The Dunkirkers made prize of some of the busses (there were ten or twelve of them) almost every year: one, the Salisbury, was taken twice, and in 1639 four were captured. Spain was then at war with the United Provinces, and the Dutch buss was a natural prey of the Dunkirk privateer.

[442] P. 309.

[443] State Papers, Dom., ccccxxix. 48. Order of the King in Council, 29th September 1639. “Taking into consideration of what great importance it is and may be to the good of this kingdom to plant, increase and cherish the fishery in the North seas, and understanding that the Dutch, who reap an annual great benefit thereby, have and do not only privately underhand, but too manifestly also oppose the endeavours of his Majesty’s good subjects, who have of late years employed their industry that way,” it was ordered that the Lord Treasurer, the Earl Marshal, the Lord Admiral, the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Dorset, and one of the Secretaries of State, calling to their aid Sir Henry Marten (Judge of the Court of Admiralty), should forthwith “consult and advise what fitting course may be taken to advance and settle the said fishery, and particularly to consider whether it may not be fit to debar the exportation of lampreys, without which the Dutch cannot well, as is informed, continue their fishing for cod and ling, until his Majesty’s subjects be quietly settled in the herring fishing.” The Dutch obtained their lampreys for bait almost exclusively from England, and chiefly from the Thames. The above account of the proceedings of the Fishery Society is summarised (for the most part) from numerous State Papers. It was stated by Simon Smith, who was latterly Secretary to Pembroke’s association, that £10,000 was lost through the Dunkirkers.

[444] Oppenheim, A History of the Administration of the Royal Navy, i. 215, 217, 221.

[445] Ibid.; Hannay, A Short History of the Royal Navy.

[446] Oppenheim, op. cit., 265.

[447] Oppenheim, op. cit., 275.

[448] State Papers, Dom., lvi. 66; lxi. 81; lxx. 8, 9; liv. 56; xc. 70, 119; clxii. 82, 45.

[449] State Papers, Dom., lix. 79; xci. 30, 45; xcii. 62; xciii. 82; xcv. 39; clxiii. 65; clxxx. 94. In 1630 a Yarmouth fisherman, owner of one of the Iceland smacks under convoy, petitioned the Council for relief from the payment of the twenty shillings, on the grounds that before the Order was made he had paid £5 for the assurance of his boat during that season to the assurance office in London, and that three boats belonging to him had been previously taken by Dunkirkers.

[450] Oppenheim, op. cit., 276.

[451] State Papers, Dom., cclxviii. 31, 88 ; cclxiv. fol. 20a; ccxciii. 107; ccxciv. 46.

[452] State Papers, Dom., ccxciii. 107; ccxciv. 46; ccxcv. 31, 69, 71; cclxiv. fol. 164. Many of the crew of the man-of-war were English, Scottish, or Irish. It was probably owing in part to the considerable numbers of British subjects serving on the Dutch men-of-war that they were always favoured by the country people.

[453] Ibid., ccxcvi. 5, 14, 30. Joachimi to States-General, (26 Aug.)/(4 Sept.), Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 380.

[454] Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 30,221, fol. 43b.

[455] Reglement for Preventing Abuses in and about the Narrow Seas and Ports, March 1633. State Papers, Dom., cclx. 127, 128; cclxxix. 18. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 30,221, fol. 44 (Pepys’ collections). Copies exist in State Papers, Dom., vol. 515, Nos. 38, 39 (1647), extracted from Admiralty Book, Liber E, and in State Papers, Dom., Jas. I., vol. 11, No. 40 (1604), wrongly calendered ([see p. 119]).

[456] Ibid., liv. 9, 33.

[457] Oppenheim, op. cit.

[458] State Papers, Dom., lxxxvi. 73, 75; ccxxix. 102.

[459] Gardiner, Hist., vii. 349 et seq.

[460] Gardiner, op. cit., 368.

[461] State Papers, Dom., cclxxxvii. 55; ccxci. 14.

[462] Ibid., cclxxvi. 65.

[463] Rushworth, Collections, ii. 257. State Papers, Dom., cclxxvi. 64. Compare the language of Edward III. in 1336, p. 36.

[464] Rushworth, ii. 294, 353. Compare Windebank’s notes of the speech, State Papers, Dom., ccxc. 108: “The Judges at the Assizes to let the people know his Majesty’s care to preserve the ancient dominion (of the seas).”

[465] Gardiner, op. cit.

[466] State Papers, Dom., cclxix. 51.

[467] Resol. States-General, 9/19 Nov. 1633; Muller, Mare Clausum: Bijdrage tot de Geschicdenis der Rivaliteit van Engeland en Nederland in de Zeventiende Eeuw, 229.

[468] State Papers, Dom., ccxxxiv. 87; Nicholas’s Letter Book, Feb. 16, fol. 97. Muller thinks it was this revival of feeling about the dominion of the sea that caused the edition of Grotius’ Mare Liberum to be published this year, with the Magnus Intercursus appended.

[469] Coke to Boswell, 16/26 April 1635. Needham, Additional Evidences concerning the Right of Soveraigntie and Dominion of England in the Sea; Justice, A General Treatise of the Dominion and Laws of the Sea, 181; Entick, A New Naval History, xvii. If, as is probable, the mention of discourses concerning Mare Clausum referred to Selden’s work, it would show that the author was then known to be engaged in writing it.

[470] “Dessein de Sa Ma^te de la grande Bretagne p̄ sa flotte p̅r̅e̅nte,” 15/25 May 1635. Aitzema, Saken van Staet en Oorlogh, ii. 164; Muller, op. cit., 230. Boswell suppressed the reference to the Dutch fisheries and to the old troubles at Greenland and in the East Indies, and he toned down the part prohibiting the warships of other nations from keeping guard in the British seas.

[471] State Papers, Dom., cclxxxvi. 100.

[472] They were as follow: Merhonour, admiral, 44 guns; James, vice-admiral, 48 guns; Swiftsure, rear-admiral, 42 guns; St George, 42 guns; St Andrew, 42 guns; Henrietta Maria, 42 guns; Vanguard, 40 guns; Rainbow, 40 guns; Red Lion, 38 guns; Constant Reformation, 42 guns; Antelope, 34 guns; Leopard, 34 guns; Swallow, 34 guns; Mary Rose, 26 guns; Bonaventure, 34 guns; and the First, Third, Eighth, and Tenth Lion’s Whelps, of 14 guns each. The merchant ships were the Sampson, Freeman, Royal Exchange, William Thomas, and Pleiades.

[473] The king to the Earl of Lindsey, State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 84.

[474] Instructions for our very good Lord, the Earle of Lindsey, Admirall of his Majesties’ fflete, in his Majesty’s shippe the Merhonour, prepared for this present Expedic̃on for Guard of the Narrow Seas. 2nd May 1635. State Papers, Dom., clvii. fol. 135b et seq.

[475] Ibid., cxcii. 3, 21st May 1631; clvii. fol. 117b. It was found that the French had a fleet of thirty-nine men-of-war, and two additional ships were building. Ibid., cxcviii. 84.

[476] 20th May 1631. Ibid., cxci. 80.

[477] State Papers, Dom., ccxxxvii. 1.

[478] Ibid., clvii. fol. 132, 26th April 1634.

[479] In the memorandum which Pennington submitted to the Admiralty, he said: “Sixtly, that if any stranger bee oprest by another stranger y^t is stronger than hee, within the jurisdicion of ye Narrow Seas, and y^t hee flyes for succor or refuge to any of his Majesty’s shippes imployed for the guard of the sayd Seas, and come under his lee, and craves protection, whether his Majesty’s ffloatinge ffortes shall not have ye same privelege in succoringe and defendinge them as ffortes a Land hath.” Ibid., cclxv. 23.

[480] Windebank and Cottington were two of the three in the confidence of the king as to the secret negotiations with Spain. State Papers, Dom., cclxv. 23, 25, 26, 41, 49, 78, 89; clvii. fol. 132.

[481] An equally obscure answer of Coke’s is recorded in the collection of papers for the ambassadors to Cologne in 1673 (State Papers, Dom., Chas. II., vol. 339, p. 513). “1636. Ea Leicester (sic) Query—What answer shall I give if I be asked what I mean by the seas of ye King my master, or our seas? The Answer returned by Mr Secretary Coke in his own hand: By the King’s or our seas you are not to understand or condescend to any restrictive sense but to answer ye Brittish Seas: and that the 4 seas mentioned in our laws are thereby meant, which you must not otherwise circumscribe or limitt; besides they are the same which in all antiquity have been acknowledged to belong unto us, as is sufficiently proved by authentic records.”

[482] State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 84, 85.

[483] State Papers, Dom., cclxxxviii. 4; cclxxxix. 75. He had “no more than two blue and two white flags with six pendants to each of them; there are wanting two red flags and six pendants, one blue flag and one white.” The office of Lord High Admiral was in commission from the death of the Duke of Buckingham in 1628 until the appointment of the Earl of Northumberland in 1638.

[484] Gardiner, Hist., vii. 385.

[485] The inhabitants of the coast were apprehensive of the French fleet, and the Admiral sent a message to the Mayor offering to show his orders from the King of France, which bound him to honour and respect everything that belonged to his Majesty of Great Britain. State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 23.

[486] State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 58, 59.

[487] Gardiner, op. cit., 385; State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 61. The English agent in France reported in August that two squadrons under French admirals, and bearing the French flag, were to ply, one along the coast of France from Belle Isle to Bayonne, the other at the mouth of the Channel. The remainder of the fleet, half French and half Hollander (which guarded the coast up to Calais and to the north of it), bore the States’ colours, and were under the command of the Hollander Admiral,—“an expedient to avoid acknowledging his Majesty’s right in the Channel, in case this squadron should meet his Majesty’s fleet and be constrained to vail the bonnet.”

[488] Gardiner, loc. cit.

[489] It was from this Hollander, met off Beachy Head on 9th June, that Lindsey learned that the French fleet was at Portland.

[490] State Papers, Dom., ccxci. 80, 27th June 1635.

[491] Ibid., ccxcvi. 14.

[492] State Papers, Dom., ccxciii. 12.

[493] Gardiner, op. cit., 386.

[494] Lindsey to the king, 2nd August; Coke to Lindsey, 4th August. State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 9, 42. The rumour that two of the king’s ships were to go north to the busses reached the ears of the States’ ambassador. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 376.

[495] State Papers, Dom., ccxcvi. 5, 14, 16, 30. Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 380. Res. Holl., 7th September, Bosgoed, op. cit., p. 358. Twelve busses and three of the convoys took refuge at Newcastle; others in the Firth of Forth. The skipper of a coasting vessel from Scotland to Scarborough saw seven busses in flames; the sky was red from the conflagration. The Leopard, one of Lindsey’s fleet, convoying merchantmen to Dunkirk, met eighteen of the privateers returning in triumph. The Dutch busses were the natural prey of the Dunkirkers, and the States were put to great expense and pains in guarding them. In 1625 a Spanish agent, Egidio Ouwers, submitted to Cardinal de Ceva, at Brussels, an elaborate plan for destroying the Dutch herring fishery, so as to “spoil their chiefest mine by which they maintained their wars.” State Papers, Dom., dxxi. 30.

[496] State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 44.

[497] The facts as to the movements, &c., of the fleet are mostly taken from the Earl of Lindsey’s Journal, written for the king’s information, and preserved in the Record Office. “A Relation of the passages that daily happened in this late expedition under my conduct, being by Your Majesty’s gratious appointment Admiral and General of your Majesty’s ffleet sett forthe for guard of your Narrow Seas, from the time that the ships mett all together in the Downes, 28^o May, untill the 8^o of October following, I making my first entrance aboard yo^r Royall ship the Merhonor, 16^o May, in Tilbury Hope.” Ibid., ccxcix. 28.

[498] Pennington to Nicholas, 3rd August 1635. State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 18. Pennington, it may be said, lost no chance of sneering privately at the Earl of Lindsey, especially in his correspondence with his friend, Nicholas, the Secretary to the Admiralty. When Lindsey finally reached the Downs in October, and Pennington was appointed to command the winter fleet, he told Nicholas that he had hoped that “they” who had had the “sweet of the summer should have had a little of the sour sauce of the winter”; he had spent “twice as much as he, and more every way for the king’s honour.” Nicholas shared the feeling. On hearing that Lindsey had appointed a French cook on board the Henrietta Maria he refused to believe it, “as it was never since his time known that any Frenchman was admitted scarce to go aboard, much less to be an officer in any of the king’s ships”; and he foretold great evils from it. Ibid., ccxcix. 19; ccxci. 61.

[499] Gardiner, op. cit.

[500] Brit. Mus. Add. MSS., 17,677, O, fol. 364.

[501] State Papers, Dom., cclxxviii. 3. Roe’s reference was to the fishings at the Zowe or Sowe, where great numbers of gurnards were caught ([see p. 65]). The stipulation of Richelieu concerned the allied squadrons which were to blockade Dunkirk, as arranged by Article viii. of the treaty. Article xii., after providing for the size of the squadrons, continues, “Et au cas que lesdites esquadres viennent à s’assembler, comme il peut arriver qu’il sera necessaire pour le bien commun, l’Admiral desdits Seigneurs les Estats abaissera à l’abord son pavillon du grand mast, et le saluëra de son canon, et celui du Roi le resaluëre comme de coustume, et comme il en a esté use par le Roi de la Grande Bretagne.” Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, 83 (?).

[502] State Papers, Dom., lxxix. 17. “Athwart ye opening of Falmouth four sailes stood with their forefoot,” and very earnestly tried to weather the English ships. Among them was a French man-of-war of Rochelle, but they shot four or five pieces of ordnance at him, and “soo brought him by ye lee.” [See p. 207].

[503] He reported, 16th September 1631, that two English merchantmen had met five French men-of-war, bearing the French king’s colours on the main-top, and the Malta colours on the poop, who saluted them with, “Amain, rogues, for the King of France”; but as the English ships refused to strike and prepared to fight, the French sheered off. He added that he had learned, through an interview between one of his lieutenants and one of the French commanders, that the latter had a commission to compel any English ships he could master to take in their flags and dowse their top-sails, and that three French admirals had been appointed for regaining the regality of the Narrow Seas, because, as the French officer said, the Pope had taken it from France and given it to England, but now that we had fallen from their religion it had been reassigned. State Papers, Dom., cxcix. 51.

[504] Nicholas to Pennington, 29th September 1631. Ibid., cc. 45.

[505] Pennington to Nicholas, 2nd October (ibid., cci. 7). Pennington, whose information about the French trying to make the English strike had given the Admiralty and the king “good content” (ibid., cc. 27), had been ordered westwards to retaliate, but “he hoped the Lords would not think that his two ships half-manned were able to encounter with twenty well manned”. Ibid., cci. 29.

[506] 14th October, 12th November 1631. State Papers, Dom., cci. 54; cciii. 32.

[507] Ibid., cclxiii. 75.

[508] Ibid., cccxvii. 102.

[509] State Papers, Dom., cclxv. 23, 25, 41, 49.

[510] Ibid., cccxvii. 102.

[511] State Papers, Dom., cci. 59; ccii. 17; ccciii. 71, 79; ccx. 58; ccxxxiv. 37; ccxlviii. 81.

[512] State Papers, Dom., ccxx. 25, 26.

[513] Ibid., ccxxxiv. 5, 32. “The Ambassador and the other Lords being at dinner in the great cabin, the gunner sent word that a Hollander was passing with his top-sails a-trip, to whom he gave order to make a shot. The Lords and gentlemen left the table to see the event, but the Hollander, neither for that shot nor two or three others, would lower the same one foot; whereupon he gave order to shoot him through, which was done, with as much speed as they could bring ordnance to bear, so as before she passed she had twenty shot in and through her sides, which they heard to crash in the same. They could perceive but one piece she had forth; to that fire was given twice. The shot came not near, but they might well hear the same. After her came the Admiral with his flag on the main-top.” Ketelby cleared for action and was giving orders for a broadside; but the ambassador twice desired him to give over and stand for Dover, and he submitted. If it had not been for his passengers, Ketelby did not doubt he would have brought them in to answer the contempt.

[514] State Papers, Dom., ccxcv. 13; ccxcvii. 28; ccxcviii. 16. It was the usual practice to make the offender pay for the shot.

[515] State Papers, Dom., ccc. 43; ccci. 28; ccxcix. 21.

[516] Ibid., cclxv. 49.

[517] Ketelby and Viscount Conway explained that it was necessary to punish them in a public manner, since imprisonment in the bilboes and such corporal punishments were not effective. Conway recommended Scott’s fine to be remitted, owing to his worth and poverty, as well as from the fact that he had recently been taken captive by the “Turkish” pirates, and his ransom was not all paid. Bushell, as we learn from a petition “of divers poor men, women, and children, whose kindred are now in slavery at Argier and Sallee,” had redeemed and brought home thirty of the captives; and it is probable that neither of the fines was exacted. It is doubtful if Lindsey’s action was regular, for the vessels, according to his statement, had not come within gunshot. The Neptune was one of the three ships fitted out by London for Northumberland’s fleet. State Papers, Dom., ccxv. 28, 65, 67; cclxv. 50; cclxiii. 75; ccxcvi. 30, 34, 37; ccci. 31.

[518] Molloy, De Jure Maritimo et Navalis, 149.

[519] Regulations and Instructions relating to his Majesty’s Service at Sea, 1734, 1766, 1790, Art. xi.; 1808, Art. xxiv. A case of the kind occurred in 1829. Phillimore, Commentaries upon International Law, ii. 58.

[520] Gardiner, op. cit., viii. 84.

[521] State Papers, Dom., ccxcvi. 69; cci. 26, 97.

[522] State Papers, Dom., ccciii. 74; cccv. 36, 38; cccxi. 1. The total number of men in the first fleet, which included five of the “Whelps” and two pinnaces then building, was to be 4580; in the second, in which were included two “Whelps,” it was to be 1890.

[523] Hume (Hist. Engl., ch. lii. an. 1636), following earlier writers, places the number at sixty. Thus Frankland (Annals of King James and King Charles the First, 477 (1681)) speaks of “sixty gallant ships.” Baker (A Chronicle of the Kings of England, 455 (1679)) and others, including most of the naval historians of the eighteenth century, give the same number.

[524] Northumberland’s Journal, State Papers, Dom., cccxliii. 72. Pennington, on hearing of the appointment of the Earl of Northumberland, wrote in February 1636 to the Council expressing his satisfaction; verily believed he would carry himself like a general in all respects, unless led away, “as the last was, by such as neither knew the honour of the place nor the way of managing the service for the honour and safety of the kingdom.”

[525] State Papers, Dom., ccxcviii. 63.

[526] The Lords of the Admiralty to the king, 24th February 1636. State Papers, Dom., cccxiii. 24, 25. The documents are in Windebank’s writing; the first is endorsed “Fishing. Waftage. An excellent Piece.” See [Appendix I].

[527] “Instructions for our very good Lord, the Earle of Northumberland, Admirall of his Majesty’s fflete in his Majesty’s ship the Triumph, prepared for this present Expedic̃ion for guard of his Majesty’s Seas.” State Papers, Dom., clvii. fol. 141.

[528] Gardiner, viii. 157. The English ships were “clogged with timber,” which, however, served them well in the first Dutch war when they were pitted against the slighter-built ships of the States. (Oppenheim, op. cit., 254.)

[529] State Papers, Dom., clvii. fol. 141b; ccxiv. 107. The Earl of Northumberland to the Lords of the Admiralty, cccxxi. 44, 45, 65, 78, 87; cccxxii. 16, 40; cccxxv. 78, 79; cccxxvi. 16, 38; cccxxvii. 42, 73. The Lords of the Admiralty to Northumberland, 14th June, cccxxvi. 32.

[530] Rowland Woodward to Francis Windebank, 16th December 1630. State Papers, Dom., clxxvii. 13. The writer said he “much feared the event if it should be put in execution.”

[531] Ibid., cclxxix. 67.

[532] Petition of the Governor, Assistants, and Fellowship of the Merchant Adventurers of England to the Council. Ibid., cclxxxix. 91.

[533] Ibid., cclxxxv. 84.

[534] State Papers, Dom., cccviii. 48; cccxx. 14.

[535] A Proclamation for Restraint of Fishing upon His Maiesties Seas and Coasts without License. State Papers, Dom., cccxx. 62. Fœdera, xx. 15.

[536] The form annexed to the Earl of Northumberland’s instructions, sent to him on 14th June from Hampton Court, and which he received at Plymouth on the 22nd, is as follows:—