138 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



privileges, and immunities; and that a joint -stock should 

 be raised like that of the East India Company, the annual 

 profit on which was estimated at 75 per cent. 



Those schemes resembled the one put forward by Hitch- 

 cock in the previous reign and frequently advocated since. 

 Sir Walter Cope indeed told King James, in 1612, that "this 

 royal work," within his own knowledge, had been in project 

 for thirty years, but that in Queen Elizabeth's time it had 

 been "ever silenced" in favour of the Netherlands, who then 

 maintained war against a common enemy. 1 



Within two or three years of the accession of James, the 

 project took more definite form, and was brought before the 

 Privy Council, and it was carefully considered in 1607. An 

 integral part of the proposal was that strangers fishing in 

 the British seas should pay tribute to the king, while the 

 native fishery remained untaxed, and that the tribute should 

 be farmed out to patentees, as was done with the assize- 

 herrings in Scotland, who would then establish a national 

 buss fishery and pay a rent to the crown. 2 There were 

 several schemes of the kind, but the one which received 

 most attention was put forward by a Mr Richard Rainsford, 

 acting on behalf of a number of London merchants, who 

 aimed at forming an association to be called the Society 

 of Fishing Merchants. In 1608 the proposals were referred 

 to the Earl of Northampton, Lord Privy Seal, and the Earl 

 of Devonshire, who commended them as being for the pub- 

 lic good, and early next year a formal and detailed scheme 

 was prepared. 3 In the preamble stress was laid on the fact 

 that the Hollanders and other nations had their principal 

 fishing on his Majesty's coasts and seas, "whose soveraignty 

 ought therein to be acknowledged, not only to procure thereby 



1 State Papers, Dom., James I., Ixxi. 89. Malynes, who, as already suggested in 

 the note on page 128, may have been the author of Cope's tract, said exactly 

 the same thing in 1622 that there had been a continual agitation for over thirty 

 years to make busses and fisher-boats. The Maintenance of Free Trade, 42. 



2 J. Bowssar to Sir Julius Caesar, 14th October 1607, Brit. Mus. Lansdowne 

 MSS., 142, fol. 373. 



3 A Project for to restore unto the King's Majestic his Dueties of Fishing by 

 re-establishing ye Auncient Manner of fishing for herringe, Coad, and Ling, for 

 maintenaunce of Navigation and Marryners with greatt increase of Traffique, 

 22nd April 1609, Brit. Mus. Lansdoivne MSS., 142, fol. 371. State Papers, Dom., 

 xlviii. 95. 



