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CHAPTER VI. 



CHARLES I. FISHERIES AND RESERVED WATERS. 



IT was during the reign of Charles, into whose hands the 

 sceptre passed in the spring of 1625, that the English preten- 

 sions to the sovereignty of the sea attained their most extrava- 

 gant proportions, a circumstance which was owing in great 

 measure to the condition of domestic affairs and the king's 

 assumption of personal government. James had been content 

 to limit his assertion of sovereignty to the question of the 

 rights of fishing and the preservation of the " King's Chambers " 

 from the hostile acts of belligerents. But Charles, while 

 vigorously pursuing this policy so long as he was able, com- 

 bined with it the most extreme claims to dominion on the 

 neighbouring seas that had ever been put forward by an 

 English king. The sovereign rights of jurisdiction over the 

 " Sea of England " which were supposed to have been exercised 

 by the early Plantagenets, were now roused from the slumber 

 of centuries and revived in their most aggressive form. The 

 King of England was to be lord of the surrounding seas, and to 

 rule over them as a part of his territory. A beneficent and 

 universal peace was to reign over the waters of the German 

 Ocean and the Channel, unbroken by the sound of an angry 

 shot. No other fleets or men-of-war be they Spanish, or 

 Dutch, or French were to be allowed " to keep any guard " 

 there, to offer any violence, to take prize or booty, or to search 

 the merchant vessels of other nations. The blockade of the 

 opposite coasts of the Continent by an enemy's fleet, as that of 

 Flanders by the Dutch or French, was to be interdicted, because 

 those coasts were washed by the British seas and blockading 

 was a warlike operation. On the other hand the king was to 



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