56 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



Fishery " to the States of Holland, and by them applied 

 for to the States- General, who at once enacted it to be a 

 law for the whole of the Republic.* Nor was the College's 

 vigilance against transgressions of the herring laws 

 confined to stopping them at home. When any were 

 detected abroad, diplomatic intervention was resorted to 

 upon their advice, and sometimes successfully. As an 

 instance of this, an " accord," of the nature of what would 

 now be called a commercial treaty, was concluded between 

 the States-General and the Senate of Hamburg on May 

 22nd, 1609,1 by which the latter city bound itself over not 

 to let any herring caught before St. John's be sold in its 

 market. This treaty, about the observation of which 

 considerable difficulties arose a century afterwards, was 

 urged by the States, upon the College's advice, who had 

 detected the sale of early herring at Hamburg, in dan- 

 gerous concurrence with the Dutch exporters, who were 

 bound by law not to fish before St. John's. \ 



The year 1609 was a momentous one for the Dutch 

 Grand Fishery, for more reasons than the treaty with 

 Hamburg. It was in this year that James the First of 

 England, by the famous " proclamation touching fishing," 

 menaced the trade with a blow which, if not averted, 



* Res. Holland, 1606, p. 934 ; Gr. Placaetboek I. p. 755. 



f Res. Noll. 1609, p. 918. A copy of the document is inserted in 

 Ned. Zaarboeken, 1752, p. 483. 



\ Treaties, or contracts of a similar nature seem to have existed be- 

 tween the city of Cologne and those of Rotterdam, Delft, and Schiedam, 

 at even an earlier period, by which the former bound itself not to admit 

 any herring unless branded under the Hollands' regulations. In 1754 

 the Dutch Consul at Cologne reported that herring from Zealand was 

 admitted there against the treaties, " whereas no other herring than 

 from Holland had been seen there since more than two hundred 

 years." 



