THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. \1\ 



was maintained between the two Courts, war between the 

 British and Dutch whalers under the northern lights was, 

 of course, inevitable under these circumstances. In 1617, 

 the States having granted an insufficient convoy to their 

 whaling fleet, the establishment built by them at Spitzbergen 

 was destroyed by the English. Forcible retaliation was 

 taken by the Dutch in the next year, when open warfare 

 seems to have prevailed in the north all the summer, 

 occasioning, on the 3rd of October, 1618, a sharp and 

 menacing remonstrance to the States-General from the 

 British Ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, whose " Lettres 

 Memoires et Negociations" (edited in English and trans- 

 lated into French) are a source of much information upon 

 the fishery differences between the two nations in the years 

 1616-20. 



Nor, in the meantime, did peace reign in the North Sea. 

 The works of Sir Walter Raleigh * and " Gentleman " f 

 strongly contributed to keep the spirit of rivalry awake, by 

 giving the British public highly exaggerated notions of the 

 profits and prosperity derived by the Dutch from the her- 

 ring fishery, and stimulating England to try and evict those 

 competitors, whether by free competition or by legislatory 

 checks. Welwood's books of juridical controversy f at 

 the same time directed the public attention afresh towards 

 England's alleged monopoly of fishing in the British waters. 

 King James I. did not long remain deaf to exhorta- 

 tions so congenial to his own notions. In August, 1616, 

 without any previous renewal of the publication of 1609, 



* Observations touching Trade and Commerce with the Hollanders 

 (published about 1610). 



t England's Way to Win Wealth (published 1614). 



% Abridgment of all Sea Lawes (published 1613) ; De dnminio 

 Mar is (published 1616). 



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