THE JURIDICAL CONTROVERSIES 353 



work was also dedicated to the king, and in a prefatory ad- 

 dress to the three High Admirals the Duke of Lennox, the 

 Earl of Northampton, and the Earl of Nottingham he im- 

 pressed upon them the importance of the " conservacie " of the 

 sea, especially for the fisheries, and urged that strangers should 

 be stayed from scattering and breaking the shoals of fish on 

 the coast of Scotland, a duty on which some of his Majesty's 

 ships might well be employed. 



Welwood was scarcely fitted either by knowledge or capacity 

 to be a formidable antagonist to a giant like Grotius; and 

 although his writings contain quite a number of arguments 

 which were later used and expanded by Selden, it can hardly 

 be said that they had a great influence on the controversy. He 

 looked upon Mare Liberum as an attack on the rights of King 

 James and his subjects to the fisheries "on this side the seas," 

 veiled under the pretext of asserting the liberty to sail to the 

 Indies. As befitted his nationality and his time, many of his 

 arguments were drawn from Holy Writ, and he had no diffi- 

 culty in placing Providence on the side of James and in opposi- 

 tion to the Dutch. Others were more pertinent. He urged 

 that the injunctions of the Roman law applied only to the 

 subjects of Rome, and not internationally as between state and 

 state, an opinion also pressed, as we have seen, by Vasquius ; 

 that the fluidity of the sea was no bar to its occupation, and 

 that it could be, and had been in certain cases, divided up into 

 marches and boundaries, by the ordinary methods used by 

 navigators, " so f arre as is expedient for the certain reach and 

 bounds of seas, properlie pertaining to any prince or people," 

 what these bounds are or should be he does not say, though 

 he quotes the Italian limit of 100 miles with approval. He 

 held that the liberty of navigation was beyond all controversy, 

 and agreed to the principle of the complete freedom of the 

 sea so far as concerned the " main Sea or great Ocean," which 

 was "farre removed from the just and due bounds above 

 mentioned properlie perteyning to the neerest Lands of euerie 



Britanne, Ireland, and the adiacent Isles thereof. London, 1613. Tit. xxvii. deals 

 with the "community" of seas. He refers to the work of Grotius as "averie 

 learned, but a subtle Treatise (incerto authore) intituled Mare Liberum. " Welwood's 

 Abridgement was republished in 1636, without alteration ; also in the edition of 

 1686 of Malyne's Consuetudo vd Lex Mercatoria, but without his name. 



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