THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 75 



wards ; * and the liberties taken by French and Zealand 

 privateers with the reciprocal enemies' fishing vessels for 

 some time proved an impediment to the protracted negoti- 

 ations carried on at Nijmegen for the conclusion of peace 

 with France. Warfare between fishermen and Dunkirk 

 privateers lasted till late in 1678, and not till the conclu- 

 sion of the peace of Nijmegen, in August of the said year, 

 could the herring fishery be recommenced in safety. For six 

 consecutive seasons the trade had been either interdicted or 

 virtually impossible except on a small scale. No indica- 

 tions have unfortunately been preserved as to the extent 

 to which it was carried on in 1678 and the next years, but 

 even without precise knowledge of the facts there can be 

 no doubt that a twenty-five years' period of nearly constant 

 naval warfare must have occasioned a lasting decline. The 

 very considerable amount of capital which, as shown above, 

 was invested in the trade before 1652, cannot but have 

 been partly withdrawn from it in consequence of the long 

 and repeated periods of entire inactivity brought over the 

 fishery by the several wars. 



It is apparent from many circumstances on record that 

 the trade's inward organization has suffered considerably 

 from the consequences of the war. Although sustained by 

 annual subsidies, generally to the amount of fl. 30,000, 

 and in some years more, besides the annual consideration 

 of fl.6,ooo paid to the Grand Fishery as redemption- 

 money for the exemption from duties on salt, the 

 treasury of the Grand Fishery College was in constant 

 distress from 1670 downwards, and their administration 

 appears to have been often in a disordered condition. 



* Groot Plac. Boek. iii. 292, 298, 305 ; HolL Mercurius, 1677, p. 

 230 sqq. ', Resol. St. Gen. Sept. 2, 1675, June 3rd and 22, 1677 ; Res. 

 HolL 1677, p. 381. 



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