The “additional evidences” brought forward by Needham comprised the proclamation of James in 1609, and of Charles in 1636, forbidding unlicensed fishing; some of the letters that passed between the English Government and their ambassadors at The Hague; extracts from Sir John Boroughs’ Sovereignty of the British Seas, which was first published in the previous year; and a few other papers of little importance. The purpose of the book was better served by Needham’s bitter if rather frothy invective against the Dutch, and by his ranting appeals to English patriotism to conquer the foe and establish our interests on the sea beyond the possibility of future question.[740]
Selden was still alive, and the translation was doubtless made with his concurrence, whatever he may have thought of it. He was himself soon drawn into the controversy which the book evoked. Graswinckel, the Dutch lawyer who had been chosen by the States-General in 1636 to reply to Selden’s Mare Clausum, and whose neglected treatise had ever since being lying in the secret archives at The Hague, again entered the lists. His shaft was ostensibly directed against a certain Italian writer, P. B. Burgus, who had published a work eleven years before in support of the right of Genoa to the dominion of the Ligurian Sea.[741] There was no apparent reason why the Dutch lawyer should be at the pains to attempt to refute a claim so remote and after so long an interval; but Burgus quoted largely from Mare Clausum, and Graswinckel seized upon the opportunity to attack Selden, and to gratify his feelings by making use of his early abortive treatise, under the guise of replying to the Italian author. And his attack on Selden was very bitter.[742] On the main question, the familiar arguments were adduced against the appropriation of seas, with the usual seasoning of Scriptural and classical quotations; the historical claims of England to the sovereignty of the sea were treated in a sarcastic and bantering spirit, and the authenticity of some of the records cited by Selden was questioned; while he said that in many respects the Hollanders were the real lords of the British seas. But he made a personal attack on Selden, accusing him of having written Mare Clausum in order to get out of prison.[743] Selden made a strong reply, explaining the circumstances under which his treatise was written, and entering into a minute description of the documents which Graswinckel suggested he had invented; but on the controversy as to the dominion of the seas he contributed nothing new.[744]
Stimulated by the war and the dispute which had precipitated it, a number of works were now published in Holland in defence of the freedom of the seas and the liberty of fishing, and opposing the claims of England to any special maritime jurisdiction. Among them was another dissertation by Graswinckel, published before he was aware of Selden’s reply to his attack, and apparently containing further extracts from his stillborn treatise. This time the earlier Scottish lawyer, Welwood, was assailed, and his book, De Dominio Maris, was republished in Holland in order to serve, apparently, as a theme and target. Graswinckel was especially severe against any claim to interfere with the herring fishery or to impose tribute on the fishermen.[745] The controversy continued to rage on both sides of the North Sea, but in England it fell for the most part into the incompetent hands of ignorant pamphleteers, who vilified the Dutch in pious but intemperate language without shedding much light upon the question.
But if there was a dearth of competent pens in England able to carry on a juridical controversy about the sovereignty of the sea, it was not for lack of belief in the importance of the matter. At no previous time in English history had popular feeling been more aroused or was the general resolution stronger to maintain the rights of the country in the seas. The traditional sentiment of the nation, which Charles had in large measure alienated by his ship-money exactions and his bungling and fruitless attempts to maintain those rights, was revived in full force, and it was greatly strengthened by other considerations relating to commerce and trade. Though English commerce and shipping had greatly developed since the earlier part of the century, by far the larger part of oversea traffic was still in the hands of the Dutch. It was against this predominance that the Navigation Act was aimed. The pre-eminence of the Dutch excited the emulation of the nation to outvie and outdo them, and success in this policy was believed to be closely bound up with the assertion of the sovereignty of the sea. Before the war began, the authors of works on commerce and navigation had urged the Parliament to enforce these claims, even in the Mediterranean against France, and for the same reasons that were formerly used by Sir Walter Raleigh.[746] To the national sentiment and commercial ambitions was added the zeal of religious fanaticism. The godly Barebones Parliament of 1653, who looked askance at the Dutch as carnal and worldly politicians, held it necessary that the seas should be secured and preserved as peaceable as the land, in order to prepare for the coming of Christ and the personal reign.[747]
CHAPTER XI.
THE PARLIAMENT, THE COMMONWEALTH, AND THE PROTECTORATE—continued.
THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS.
The importance of the questions connected with the claim to the sovereignty of the sea was revealed in the long negotiations with the Dutch which preceded the conclusion of peace. These were begun at a very early stage of the contest. From the first the war had been as distasteful to Cromwell as it was to John de Witt and the leading men in the States of Holland, and so soon as the beginning of August 1652, within three months of Tromp’s encounter with Blake, clandestine negotiations were set on foot, with the approval of Cromwell, Vane, Whitelock, and other leaders in England, with the object of bringing about peace; and though nothing came of them at the time, they were resumed early in 1653. The Speaker informed the Parliament on 22nd March that he had received a formal letter from the States of Holland desiring that the negotiations might be resumed, and on 1st April the Parliament replied favourably, offering to take up the negotiations at the point at which they had been broken off when the special ambassador, Pauw, quitted London in the previous year.[748] This implied payment to the Parliament of the expense incurred in consequence of the Dutch naval preparations and of Tromp’s fight with Blake, and “security” for a close alliance,—conditions unacceptable by the ruling oligarchy at The Hague.
In order to find some more satisfactory basis for the negotiations, the States-General in June 1653, immediately after the two days’ battle, and when the English fleet was blockading the Dutch ports, sent four deputies to London. One of them, Hieronymus van Beverning, a trusty friend of De Witt’s and a representative of the States of Holland, came on in advance, reaching London on June 17; the others, Nieuport, van de Perre, and Jongestal, following a few days later.[749] The deputies arrived at a time when Cromwell, having dissolved the Long Parliament and the old Council of State, was dictator, and the new Council was composed of his own nominees; and Cromwell, as is well known, had been against the war and was favourable to peace.[750] Nevertheless, a stiff attitude was adopted towards the envoys. To their request that negotiations might be resumed on the basis of the thirty-six articles the Council turned a deaf ear, putting forward the demands for reparation and security, and refusing to proceed with the negotiations until they had received a satisfactory answer.[751] Cromwell, however, sent a private message to Nieuport, on 30th June, that the Council would not insist on satisfaction and security. He suggested that Tromp should be suspended for a few months; that a binding treaty and alliance should be concluded; and that for security two or three Englishmen should sit in the States-General or Council of State in the Netherlands, and the same number of Dutchmen in the English Council. If these conditions were agreed to, little difficulty would be made about the thirty-six articles, the Dutch would be allowed to carry on their herring fishery in the British seas, and a truce probably granted.[752] But by the next day Cromwell, after discussion with the Council, had changed his mind, and the debate went on about reparation and security. The deputies were told that the Council did not ask for a great sum, but that the “security” meant “uniting both states together in such manner as they may become one people and Commonwealth, for the good of both,”[753]—a scheme apparently much the same as St John had taken with him to The Hague.
This extraordinary proposal for a union, closer even than that which existed among the seven United Provinces themselves, astonished the envoys of the many-headed Government. They pretended at first not to understand it, and went on talking of “alliance” and the Intercursus Magnus; but the Council pointedly declared that what they meant was not the mere “establishing of a league and union between two sovereign states and neighbours, but the making of two sovereign states one,” under a joint Government, all the subjects to possess equal privileges and freedom in either country “in respect of habitations, possessions, trade, ports, fishing, and all other advantages whatsoever.”[754] The deputies considered such a scheme “absurd,”—nothing of the kind had ever been heard of in history; it was opposed to the constitution of the United Provinces and was impossible; and they hinted that if the proposal was pressed they would have to return home. They thought it was far better to take as a basis for the negotiations the treaty of 1496, which was a perfect, true, and sincere alliance, league, and confederation by land and sea. To this the Council replied that they had desired a coalescence of the two countries as the best security for the future of both, and especially of the United Provinces; and that the deputies offered nothing more than they did at first, by which they demanded free trade to the English colonies and the suspension of the Navigation Act; “nay,” the Council continued, “they do in effect demand to share with this state in the sovereignty of the narrow seas, and in their right of fishing,” whereas these advantages could only be obtained by such a coalescence as had been proposed.[755]
The negotiations had now come to such a pass that the Dutch commissioners judged it to be necessary to report verbally to the States, and Nieuport and Jongestal left for home with this object on 3rd August. They did not return until the end of October; and while the official conferences with the Council were suspended in the interval, the two deputies who remained in London carried on important private negotiations with Cromwell, mostly through an intermediary. At first Cromwell descanted on the advantages to the United Provinces of the proposed coalescence, including the complete liberty they would have of fishing on the British coasts. Later he put forward the extraordinary schemes which remind one of the dreams of Napoleon—a confederation of the Protestant states of Europe for the propagation of the Gospel; the partition of the rest of the world, Asia to fall to the share of the Dutch and America to England; a war of conquest against Spain and Portugal, and then there would be complete freedom of commerce and of fishery in all seas, without molestation or disturbance.[756] A less extravagant alternative offered was an alliance of the Protestant states, without the partition of the globe or the war of conquest; but this smaller scheme was not to carry with it either freedom of commerce or liberty of fishing. And now, for the first time since the negotiations began, a formal stipulation was asked that all ships of war of the Dutch Republic, on meeting “on the sea” with the ships of war of the Commonwealth, should show them the same respect and do them the same honour as had been practised in any former time.[757]