672 SUPPLEMENT ON 



traffic in herrings so early as the ninth century \ The 

 Flemings also had from the year 1164 commenced regu- 

 lar fishing for the herring, which they sought not off their 

 own coasts, but in the Baltic, near the Isle of Rugen, and 

 Courland. About the year 1313, the fish having changed 

 their haunts to the coast of Schonen, they were followed by 

 the fishermen. In 1417, the first English vessels appeared 

 in the Baltic, on the same pursuit ; and it would seem from 

 this circumstance, that the herring shoals had not yet come 

 down to our coasts in the numbers they subsequently did, 

 though they were certainly known and caught, as appears 

 from the charter of lands held at Carleton, in Norfolk, dated 

 in 1234, by the tenure of bringing to the King twenty-four 

 pasties of herrings, on their first coming in. There existed 

 also from the reign of King John, proper officers, with fixed 

 regulations, to superintend the fishery on our eastern coast, 

 already in the hands of the Hollanders, who obtained protec- 

 tion by proclamation, and no doubt upon payment of certain 

 dues ; and the herring-fair at Yarmouth, where the process 

 of salting and curing was carried on for several centuries, 

 was at that time, most likely, at least in part, in the hands of 

 these sturemanni 2 and marineri, as they are termed in that 

 document. About the middle of the fourteenth century, 

 Will. Beukelm, a native of Biervliet, near Sluys, in Flanders, 

 obtained celebrity for an improved method of sousing her- 



drover or boate, every of them to pay ." Stat. Hibern. 5 Edw. 



4. cap. 6. shows that more than one foreign nation frequented the Irish 

 fishing-banks in the middle of the fifteenth century. 



1 In 836, the Netherlander came to purchase salted fish. Anderson, 

 Hist, of Commerce. 



2 Stureman, Dutch, pilot, or literally, steersman. Edward III. regu- 

 lated the Yarmouth herring-fair by an act passed in the 31st of his reign. 

 In 1358, fifty lasts of herrings were shipped at Portsmouth, for the use 

 of his army in France. Herrings in tuns occur repeatedly in the account 

 of provisions collected in fortresses during the civil wars of the Planta- 

 genets. 



