A glance at the accompanying chart, indicating the boundary of the “reserved” waters as claimed by the burghs, will show how large an extent of the neighbouring seas was considered to be necessary for the subsistence of the people. Not only were all the great firths included, and the waters of the Minch and within the Isles, but it will be observed that the fourteen-mile limit around a very great part of the coast was drawn, not from the shore, but from an ideal straight line uniting the headlands.
When this report from the burghs was submitted to the Privy Council, they professed to find it “to be of too large an extent”; and they therefore, as they said, “out of their desire to his Majesty’s contentment and for the advancement of the great work,” proceeded to “retrench and restrict the universality of the exceptions” made by the burghs. The true spirit of the Council was, however, shown by the fact that their alternative scheme was practically the same. They rearranged the description of the lines at the Orkneys and Shetlands without diminishing the extent of the enclosed sea, and they carried the boundary down the east instead of the west side of the Hebrides, and so on to Islay. They thus reduced the area of the waters proposed to be reserved by omitting only the strip of fourteen miles to the west of the Hebrides. The Council declared that they had reserved an area of fourteen miles off such coasts as were well peopled, and where the inhabitants lived mostly by fishing, and could not possibly subsist and pay their rents and duties without it. They also stated that if a buss-fishing had been established in Scotland,[421] the fishing would have been reserved for the use and benefit of the country people, “seeing it cannot be qualified that ever any Hollanders or other strangers fished in these waters.”
In transmitting the two schemes to the commissioners in London, on 31st April 1631, the Council observed that at first the burghs had “stood very punctually” on the instructions at first issued to the commissioners, saying there was no need to particularise the reserved waters, since they had been included in the Act of Union, but that they had been persuaded to abandon this attitude and condescend to particulars. If this was not a stroke of Scotch humour, it would indicate that the measurement of the fourteen miles mentioned in the Draft Treaty was to be understood as expressed in the report of the burghs.[422]
Fig. 9.—Showing the limits of the “Reserved Waters” claimed by Scotland.
This kind of zeal for the “great work” on the part of the Scottish Council and burghs was naturally displeasing to the king and the English commissioners. Coke fumed at the obstacles raised by the Scottish commissioners against the realisation of his pet scheme. They disclaim not the name of association, he said, but they decline the only way of establishing it; we propound a government, and they say their laws are against it; we desire freedom to fish in all places where, by his Majesty’s license, it may be lawfully granted to us, and they reply by the “reserved waters” which “would leave no more scope to the company than strangers now enjoy.” Nay, they even propound a further limitation, and request that bounds may now be set to the seas of England and Scotland; “which debates,” he adds, “tending to division, we labour to avoid.” At this time the minds of English statesmen had not yet become saturated with lofty ideas of the king’s sovereign prerogative in his seas, and Coke did not then, as he did a little later, make use of high arguments of that kind. But he believed that the opposition of Scotland would be prejudicial to the scheme, and that further negotiations would be vain; and he proposed that an English company should be formed without waiting for the concurrence of Scotland.[423] But Charles was more patient. In June he again sent Sir William Alexander, the Secretary for Scotland, to Edinburgh, and despatched a letter to the burghs assuring them that he would be careful to preserve their privileges and liberties, and another to the Privy Council in which he expressed his astonishment that they had reserved so many places, and likewise “fyftene myles [sic] within the sea distant frome everie shoarr, where it would seeme expedient that these of the association for this generall fishing, as they have libertie to land in any place, paying the ordinarie dewteis, sould lykewayes be free to fish where ever they ar to passe.” He plainly told the Council that while he was willing to reserve for the natives all such fishings without which they could not well subsist, and which they of themselves “have and doe fullie fishe,” he would not allow anything to be reserved which might hinder the general work which was so important for all the kingdoms; and he enjoined them to give their best attention to everything that would conduce to the accomplishment of his desire. In a later letter to the President of the Council, Charles expressed his fears that if the places proposed were reserved the great business of the fishing would be put in hazard.[424] On receipt of the king’s letter, the Council, on 28th July, summoned before them the representatives of the burghs, who on being asked if they were yet resolved on their answer, said they were not; they were thereupon requested to consider the matter and to report at the meeting on 21st September.
The resolute attitude of the king was not without its effect. The burghs now modified their demands, but they still declared that it was necessary to reserve the “Firth of Lothian” within a line between St Abb’s Head and Red Head; the Moray Firth within a line between Buchan Ness and Duncansby Head; the Firth of Clyde between the Mulls of Galloway and Cantyre, and also the waters within fourteen miles along the coast between Red Head and Buchan Ness. They further desired that a space of fourteen miles outside the boundary lines of the Firths should be reserved, but on this point they stated their willingness to submit themselves to the king.[425]
The modified proposals of the burghs were submitted to the Privy Council on 22nd September by certain noblemen, gentry, and commissioners of the burghs, and an additional reason for reserving the fourteen miles along the coast between Red Head and Buchan Ness was now brought forward. If this space were opened to buss-fishing, it would, they said, ruin the salmon-fishings of the Dee, Don, Ythan, and the two Esks, “to the great prejudice of the whole kingdom.” The question of the reserved waters at the Isles and on the west coast had not been dealt with by the burghs, and the Council asked them to report on these. The burghs thereupon modified their original demands, specifying certain places that should be reserved, where the fishings had been continually carried on by Scottish fishermen and merchants, who were able, they said, to undertake and fish the same “to the full,” and within which no stranger had ever been admitted to fish. These places were as follows: (1) all lochs on the mainland between Farryhead (Cape Wrath) and the Kyle, together with Loch Hourn on the south side of Kyle; (2) the east side of Lewes, Uist, Barra, and “Muggersland” (? Mull), and the lochs of the same, together with the Broad Loch and the “Bybleheid” on the north-east part of the Lewes; (3) “Lochusherd” (? Loch Eishort) in Skye; (4) between the islands and the mainland, from “Farayhead” to the north-east point of Lewis, and for fourteen miles without the line between them it was “absolutely necessary,” for the good of the fishings in the lochs above mentioned, that no buss-fishing should be permitted. All the salmon-fishings were to be wholly reserved for the natives, and the burghs expressed the wish that fourteen miles around the Orkneys and Shetlands should also be reserved, but they referred this to the king. The question of the remaining lochs on the mainland between the Kyle and the Mull of Cantyre, and of the waters on the “backside” of Lewis, Uist, Barra, “Muggersland,” and Skye, except those previously mentioned, was to be “remitted” to the king’s consideration.[426]
The Council forwarded these propositions to London, and the burghs instructed their own commissioner in a like sense, but with an important qualification as to the Hollanders fishing on the coast of Scotland. The king was to be informed of the great oppressions and wrongs suffered by his subjects from the encroachment of the Dutch on the seas and coasts of the kingdom, at Shetland and Orkney, and lately at the Lewes. If these encroachments were allowed to continue, the burghs declared that the rich fishings would be made quite unprofitable, and they appealed to the king “to free the seas of Scotland and the Isles of the busses of the said Northlands (Netherlands),” and of other strangers, from Hamburg and Bremen, resorting to Orkney and Shetland. At the very least, they said, he ought to free the seas of the Dutch busses or fishing-boats “for the space of twenty-eight or fourteen miles, and to discharge them to have any fishing near the coasts of the said mainland or isles.” If the king would do this, the burghs promised to further to the utmost of their power “his Majesty’s most royal work of fishing,” to supply the proportional number of busses that might fall to their part, and to consent that liberty should be granted to Englishmen and Irishmen to fish in all the waters around Scotland, except the Firths of Lothian, Moray, and Clyde, and those reserved for salmon-fishing; but they would only agree to this on the condition stated and not otherwise. They also asked that the buss-fishing should not be allowed at the Lewes, that it should begin on the east coast on 24th June and the fishing at the Isles on 1st September, and that they should receive equal liberty to fish in the seas of England and Ireland for pilchards and white fish.[427]