THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 169 



British coasts and in British seas, unless licensed thereto 

 by the king's officers, upon payment of the duties in- 

 cumbent on such license. The great " Mare clausum " 

 question was by this measure openly started. 



It was at first discussed on amicable terms. The Dutch 

 Ambassador, sent to London avowedly to thank the king 

 for his good offices in the concluding of the twelve years' 

 truce with Spain, had a debate upon the point against the 

 king's counsel learned in the law, on the i6th of May, 1610 

 They based their remonstrance chiefly upon the liberties 

 anciently granted to the Dutch, and upon their being the 

 first in right to the herring fishery by reason of the best 

 method of herring curage having been invented in the 

 Netherlands, but were met by the assertion of the king's 

 dominion over the seas, and would very probably have 

 been unsuccessful had not the murder of Henry IV. of 

 France suddenly turned the king's most earnest attention 

 to the expedience of conciliatory proceedings towards all 

 those in whom allies were to be found against Spain. 

 Although fully maintaining his exclusive sovereignty in 

 the British seas, the king consented to supersede the 

 Proclamation, and the infliction menacing Dutch fishermen 

 was for the time averted. 



A conflict, however, could not long be averted between 

 two seafaring nations, both anxious to promote their 

 fisheries in the same seas. Spitzbergen, discovered in 1596 

 by the Dutch Admiral Jacob van Heemskerk, while in 

 search of the North-West Passage, and by him appro- 

 priated in the name of his Sovereigns the States-General, 

 next became the theatre of private naval war. English and 

 Dutch fishermen set about working this new shaft at the 

 same time ; but as stated in chapter II., the first attempts 

 of the latter were unfruitful, owing mainly to the plunder- 



F ; 8. N 



