THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 33 



convoying service, the appointment of officers to command 

 the ships of war, and the regulation of all further matters 

 thereunto pertaining.* This agreement between the Prince 

 and the parties concerned was readily ratified by the States 

 on July 5th, i575,f and the Herring Commissioners were 

 further empowered to levy such last-money on the herring 

 busses as they should see fit, for the gradual reimbursement 

 of the sums advanced ; i.e. properly, to distribute the 

 charges of their safety among shipowners as they should 

 judge equitable. Last-money was accordingly decreed to 

 be levied at thirty pence per last of herring in the year 

 1576,1 not by the States' collectors, but by officials ap- 

 pointed by the Herring Deputies in each of the fishing 

 towns. Thus the tax, formerly a loathed and hard-grudged 

 Government exaction, took the shape of a contribution 

 willingly granted by the parties concerned towards their 

 mutual protection and safety ; and fishing shipowners, as 

 soon as the management of their joint interests was put 

 into their own hands, formed themselves into an extensive 

 corporation and at once proceeded to take the measures 

 most urgently required. It is a fact worth mentioning, as 

 an instance of the national energy of former times, that the 

 whole of the men concerned in one of the principal indus- 

 tries thus organised their business, and readily assumed 

 heavy pecuniary obligations to keep it going, at a moment 

 when every nerve of the nation was strained in self-defence 

 against an overwhelming enemy, and the very heaviest 

 financial sacrifices had to be demanded by Government to 

 keep up a war, the duration and event of which no one 

 could at the time foresee. 



* Res. Holland^ 1575, pp. 550, 551. 



f Ibid. p. 588. 



$ Ibid. 1576, p. 89. 



