[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).