IG WHALE-nSHERV. 



act recorded by Dugdale *, expresses, that Henry 

 IV. gave, ill 1415, to the Church of Rochester, 

 the tithe of whales taken along the shore of that 

 bishoprick. 



The wliale-fishcrs of the sixteenth century, who 

 most distinguished themselves by their habitual 

 success in capturing those formidable creatures 

 which constituted the objects of their pursuit, were 

 the inhabitants of the shores of the Bay of Biscay. 

 On the French side, the fishers of Cape Breton, 

 of Plech or Old Boucaut, the Basques of Beariz, 

 of Gattari, St Jean-de-Luz, of Cibourre, &c., and 

 the Biscayans, on the side of Spain, are all un- 

 derstood to have been actively engaged in at- 

 tacking the whales, whenever they appeared in 

 the Bay of Biscay f ; and with almost uninter- 

 rupted success. The animal, however, captured 

 by these people, was not the great Mysticetus 

 or common whale, but a species of Fin-whale, 

 probably the Balsena rostrata of Linnaus, as ap- 

 pears both by the testimony of the Dutch ^, and by 



* ** Hem*icus rex Anglorum, Anselmo Archiepiscopo, &c. 

 " Sciatis nos dedisse S. Andreae de Rovecestra, &c. — Et deci- 

 " mam Balenarum quae captae fuerint in Episcopatu Rofen- 

 '* si." — Monas. Angl. i. 30. 



t Noel, Momoire, &c. p. 1 1 . 



:}: *• Nicuwe Beschry ving der VValvisvangst en Haringvisschet 

 *' ly," vol. i. 



