For this charter they undertook to pay the Crown an additional rent of £5 per annum. [80] Having thus repaired their armour they waited for a convenient occasion to renew the contest. But some 50 years or more were to pass, and another war was to be waged, before Yarmouth’s opportunity arrived for testing the strength of her new weapon.
LECTURE IV.
Part I.—In the Time of Charles I.
At the beginning of the 17th century the decay of our fisheries, and the consequent loss of sailors, on whose services the country depended for the protection of our shores, coupled with the warning which the Spaniards had given us, had caused a sense of national danger, which was realised by many besides ministers of the Crown. During his imprisonment of 13 years in the Tower of London, poor Sir Walter Raleigh wrote a pamphlet, which he presented to James I., in which he complained bitterly of our shame in allowing the Dutch and the French to get the command of our home fisheries. He says that
“While the English were sending their ships into the North Seas to catch whales, the Dutch were catching the herrings and codfish in our own seas; that in 1603 the Dutch fishermen sold £1,759,000 worth of herrings, and employed 2,000 busses and 50,000 men.”
Among other pamphlets written to rouse the nation and the government to take active measures for curing this evil, a powerful appeal appeared from an anonymous writer, entitled “England’s way to win wealth and to employ ships and manners. By Tobias, Gentleman, Fisherman and Mariner,” dated 1614. Speaking of the Dutch fishermen, he says—
“Also to Yarmouth do they daily (i.e. during the season), come into the haven up to the Key, all the most part of the great fleet of Hollanders, that go in sword-pinks, Holland toads, crab skuits, walnut shells, and great and small yeurs, 100 and 200 sail at a time together, and all the herrings they do bring they sell for ready money to Yarmouth men; and also the Frenchmen of Picardy and Normandy some hundred sail of them at a time, do come hither, and all the herrings they catch they do sell to the Yarmouth herring-mongers for ready gold.”
The writer gives the following account of the fisheries carried on by the Yarmouth merchants in their own boats.
“To this town belong some 20 Iceland Barks, which they do send for cod and ling, and some 150 sail of North Sea boats. They make a shift to live; but if they had the use of busses and also barrel fish they would excel all England and Holland; for they be the only fishermen for the North Seas, and also the best for the handling of fish that are in this land.”
He also gives an account of the trade as carried on at Lowestoft at this time, which you will be surprised to hear spoken of as a “decayed town.”