84 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



an acute form, there was a remarkable unanimity of opinion in 

 Scotland that the ancient and established custom was that 

 foreigners were not allowed to carry on their operations within 

 a " land-kenning " of the coast, that is, not nearer than where 

 they could discern the land from the top of their masts. This 

 distance was usually placed at fourteen miles, but sometimes a 

 double land-kenning, of twenty-eight miles, was claimed ; and we 

 shall see that the former distance was embodied in the Draft 

 Treaty of Union with England in 1604, as well as proposed to 

 the States-General as a provisional limit in 1619 (see p. 192), and 

 declared by Parliament and the Privy Council of Scotland to 

 be the bounds of the " reserved waters " belonging to Scotland. 

 Welwood, a Scottish lawyer who wrote at the end of the six- 

 teenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries, states 

 that before his time, after " bloody quarrels " about sea affairs 

 between the Scots and the Hollanders, the disputes were 

 arranged on the understanding that in future the Hollanders 

 were to keep at least eighty miles from the coast of Scotland, 

 which, he says, they did for a long time. If they were driven 

 nearer by stress of weather they paid a tax or tribute at the 

 port of Aberdeen, where a castle was built for this and other 

 reasons. This tax, he adds, was paid until by frequent dissen- 

 sions at home and the audacity of the Hollanders the right was 

 lost. 1 There is no very satisfactory evidence to show in how 

 far the statements of Welwood were in accordance with the 

 facts. In the records of the Privy Council a case is mentioned 

 which might be interpreted in another way. In 1587 two 

 English ships belonging to Shields, coming from the "easter 

 seas " laden with fresh fish and bound for England, were seized 

 and brought into port by one Thomas Davidson of Crail, appar- 

 ently on the plea that they had been fishing too near the shore. 

 The owners contended that the fish had been caught " upon the 

 main sea, outwith his Majesty's dominions, where not only they 

 but the subjects of all other princes had had a continual trade 

 and fishing in all times bygone past the memory of man." But 



1 De Dominio Mans, 16. In another work Welwood says, "And for the 

 eastern seas, direct from Scotland, what is more antiently notorious than that 

 covenant twixt Scottish men and Hollanders, concerning the length of their ap- 

 proaching toward Scotland by way of fishing." An Abridgement of All Sea Lawes, 

 c. 26. 



