THE HERRING-FISHERY. 209 
instances they mention. A fisherman of Dieppe caught in one 
night 280,000 herrings, and threw as many back again into the 
sea. Sometimes great sloops have been obliged to cut their nets, 
being about to sink under the superabundant weight of the fish. 
The oldest mention of the herring-fishery is found in the 
chronicles of the monastery of Evesham, of the year 709; while 
the first French documents on the subject only reach as far as 
the year 1030. As far back as the days of William the Conqueror, 
Yarmouth was renowned for its herring-fishery; and Dunkirk and 
the Brill conducted it on a grand scale centuries before William 
Beukelaer of Biervliet, near Sluys, introduced a better method 
of pickling herrings in small kegs, instead of salting them as 
before in loose irregular heaps. It is very doubtful whether 
Solon or Lycurgus ever were such benefactors of their respective 
countries as this simple uneducated fisherman has been to his 
native land; for the pickled herring mainly contributed to 
transform a small and insignificant people into a mighty nation. 
In the year 1603, the value of the herrings exported from Hol- 
land amounted to twenty millions of florins; and in 1615, the 
fishery gave employment to 2000 buysen, or smacks, and to 
37,000 men. ‘Three years later we see the United Provinces 
cover the sea with 3000 buysen ; $000 additional boats served for 
the transport of the fishes, and the whole trade gave employment 
to at least 200,000 individuals. At that time Holland provided all 
Europe with herrings, and it may without exaggeration be affirmed 
that this small fish was their best ally and assistant in casting 
off the Spanish yoke, by providing them with money, the chief 
sinew of war. Had the emperor Charles V. been able to foresee 
that Beukelaer’s discovery would one day prove so detrimental 
to his son and successor Philip II., he would hardly have done 
the poor fisherman the honour to eat a herring and drink a glass 
of wine over his tomb. 
But all human prosperity is subject to change; and thus 
towards the middle of the sixteenth century a series of cala- 
mities ruined the Dutch fisheries. Cromwell gave them the 
first blow by the Navigation Act; Blake the second, by his vic- 
tories; in 1703 a French squadron destroyed the greatest part 
of their herring-smacks; and finally, the competition of the 
Swedes, and the closing of their ports by the English, under the 
disastrous domination of Napoleon I., coinpleted the ruin of 
