THE JURIDICAL CONTROVERSIES 



to one Professor Petrus Cungeus for examination and report. 1 

 His report was read on 31st March 1636, and the States of 

 Holland, after hearing it, resolved to look upon Mare Clausum 

 merely as the work of a private person, which did not require 

 any special procedure on their part. 2 The States-General, how- 

 ever, took another view of the book, and decided that it should 

 be formally refuted, since they had learned that King Charles 

 would attempt to establish his pretended rights over the so- 

 called four seas by arguments borrowed from Mare Clausum. 

 Xo doubt at this juncture the thoughts of men in Holland 

 were turned towards Grotius, the one above all others most 

 worthy of the task of refuting Selden. But Grotius was then 

 the Swedish ambassador in France, and did not wish to offend 

 his royal mistress by publicly opposing claims not dissimilar 

 to those she herself made in the Baltic. 3 If we can trust Sir 

 Kenelm Digby, Grotius was even pleased to see his works 

 refuted. In a letter from Paris about Selden's book, which 

 was "much esteemed" there, Digby said Selden was not to 

 expect a reply from Grotius, "who wrote, he says, as a 

 Hollander, and is exceeding glad to see the contrary proved." 4 

 The official refutation of Mare Clausum, was, by a resolu- 

 tion of the States-General on 28th April 1636, entrusted to a 

 lawyer of Delft, called Dirck Graswinckel, who does not appear 

 to have been very well fitted for so onerous a duty. His 

 treatise in reply to Selden was not submitted to the States- 

 General until 13th April in the following year, and by that 

 time much had happened to alter the political complexion of 

 affairs. The States-General had then reason to believe that 

 the campaign which Charles had been carrying on against the 

 Dutch herring-busses would be suspended (p. 315), and probably 

 never resumed; and after remitting Graswinckel's work to a 

 committee, it was finally set aside and was never published, 



1 Resol. Holl., 2 , Dec. 1635. Quoted by Areiidt, Algemeene Geschiedenis des 

 Vadcrlands, iii., stuck 5, p. 8. 



2 Resol. Holl., ^p^' 1636. Muller, Mare Clausum, 283. 



"Ego, cum Suecia," he wrote to his brother on January 14, 1636, " multum 

 teneat orse maritimse, quid aliud prsestare possum quam silentium ? " Qrotii, 

 Epistolce, 864. 



M 



* Digby to Jx>rd Conway, January 31 , 1636. State Papers, Dom., cccxliv. 58. 



