THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 155 



other coast villages were not much better observers of the 

 statute, and the placards of 1676 and 1677 had to be 

 re-issued several times in 1679 and following years. On 

 March i6th, 1680, a petition by the Side fishermen, to be 

 allowed the use of " cordens "or trawls either of the twenty- 

 eight or thirty-two size was declined by the States, and a 

 strict application of the laws against such fishing once more 

 recommended to all officers concerned.* On September 

 1 7th, 1687, the placard was once more renewed,! and the 

 penalties extended to any in whose boats forbidden nets 

 should have been found, even though they should not have 

 sailed with them. But even this did not put a stop to the 

 coast fishers' habit of trawling, and the prohibition had 

 ultimately to be given up, chiefly because of the impossi- 

 bility of enforcing it. In March 1689, the " Corders" of 

 Wijk op Zee represented to the States that trawling went on 

 in the other villages in spite of the law, as it was not 

 possible to procure fresh fish by any other process during 

 war time, when fishermen " of the Fresh," were obliged to 

 keep within view of the coast. Whereupon the States 

 ordered their officers on the coast to stop the execution of 

 the laws against trawling,| and there is no evidence of 

 their having been renewed under the Republic. 



It is stated in some of the above-quoted laws against 

 trawling, that at the time the fresh fishery " was already 

 ruined for the greater part." Nothing precise is known as 

 to its extent in still earlier times ; but its decline certainly 

 did not stop at the end of the seventeenth century. The 

 Catholic provinces of the Austrian Netherlands were one 

 of the principal markets for fresh fish from the Side, which 



* Gr. Plac. Bock, iii. 1368. 



f Ibid. iv. p. 1363. 



| Res. Holl. 1689, p. 230 ; Gr. PI. B. iv. 1365. 



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