JAMES I. : DISPUTKS WITH THE DUTCH 



181 



fishermen would be very far from the North Isles, and fish- 

 ing along the English coast. 1 The fact was well known at 

 Edinburgh, but, for whatever reason, it was not pointed out 

 to the king; and the Council, urged to use "exceeding great 

 haste," chartered a Leith vessel, the Restore, put Mr Patrick 

 Bruce on board to demand the tax from the Hollanders, along 

 with a notary " to give instruments thereupon," and despatched 

 it on its bootless errand to the Shetlands. No Hollanders could 

 be discovered, and the Restore came back to Leith. 



The reason of the king's action, as well as of Carleton's 

 advice, is doubtless to be sought in the desire to strengthen 

 the case against the Dutch in view of an expected special 

 embassy from The Hague, whose appointment was now mooted, 

 and which was designed to settle various differences between 

 the two countries that had become acute. Besides the herring 

 fishery, which was a never- failing subject of dispute, there was 

 the trade in cloth, the East Indies, and the " Greenland " whale 

 fishery, about which it is necessary to say something here. 



Allusion has already been made to this phase of the con- 

 troversy respecting mare clausum which sprang up in the 

 Arctic seas, and was now mixed up with the question of 

 the liberty of fishing on the British coasts. Towards the 

 end of the previous century English whalers, for the most 

 part in the service of the Russia or Muscovy Company, 

 frequented the coasts of Greenland, and the northern seas 

 which had been opened up to English enterprise by the 

 voyages of Willoughby and Chancellor ; 2 and early in the 

 next century they also began to catch whales at Spitzbergen, 

 where they were found in enormous numbers. 3 The whalers 

 of other nations followed in their wake, and in 1612 two 

 Dutch vessels arrived at Spitzbergen to take part in the 

 fishery, and although from their ignorance of the methods 

 they failed of success that year, a company (Noordsche 

 Cotnpagnie) was formed at Amsterdam to continue the venture 

 under better conditions. 4 The Muscovy Company, whose 



1 P. 131. 2 Hakluyt's Voyages, i. 246. 



3 M'Pherson, Annals of Commerce, ii. 213. 



4 Muller, op. cit., 118. In a memorandum drawn up by Sir John Coke in 

 1625, the Dutch are said to have first "intruded" in 1613. State Papers, Dom., 

 Chas. I., dxxii. 136. See also Brit. Mus, Lansdoume MSS., 142, fol. 387 et seq. 



