376 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



while the author was soothed by the substantial pension 

 500 gulden a-year for his pains. 1 



But another Dutchman in this year assumed the task which 

 Graswinckel had fruitlessly essayed. This was Pontanus, 

 Professor of Philosophy and History in the College of Harder- 

 wyck in Guelderland, who also occupied the office of Historio- 

 grapher to the King of Denmark. He had thus, like Grotius, 

 to be cautious in his refutation of Selden's general arguments 

 upon the appropriation and dominion of seas, because the 

 claims of Denmark to such property and dominion were 

 notorious. But he was free to contest the particular rights 

 of England, which he did with zest. He subjected Selden's 

 chapters, almost seriatim, to a rigorous criticism, beginning 

 with the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons. He made the most 

 of the declarations of Elizabeth as to the freedom of the seas 

 for navigation and fishing, and of her State Paper of 1602 

 (see p. 110); and he dealt specially with the sovereignty over 

 the northern seas the Mare Caledonium and those flowing 

 between the Scandinavian countries and Iceland and Greenland 

 which he asserted were not, and never had been, under the 

 dominion of England, but always appertained to the Scandi- 

 navian nations. Pontanus entered very fully into the negotia- 

 tions which had taken place between England and Scotland 

 on the one hand, and Norway and Denmark on the other, 

 concerning those seas and the rights of navigating and fishing 

 at Iceland and Greenland subjects on which, from his official 

 position, he had special knowledge. 2 In the same year another 

 author, and he a Frenchman, entered the field in defence of the 

 appropriation and dominion of seas, 3 while a somewhat virulent 



1 The treatise was entitled, Th. Graswinckelii, Jurisc. Delph. Maris Lileri 

 Vindicice adv. virum clarissimum Johannem Seldenum. Arendt, loc. cit. ; Muller, 

 loc. cit. Goffe, writing from Holland to Archbishop Laud on 2nd February 1637, 

 stated that the book in answer to Selden's Mare Clausum was ' ' ready to come 

 forth, and the author is neither so modest nor discreet that the Elector should 

 trust him with any written assurance in that kind," that Charles would not 

 interrupt the Dutch fishery that year (State Papers, Dom., cccxlvi. 23). We 

 shall again find Graswinckel in the thick of the controversy during the first Dutch 

 war, p. 411. 



2 Joh. Isacii Pontani Discvssionvm Historicarvm Libri .Duo, quibus pnecipuk 

 quatenus et quodnam mare liberum vel non liberum clausumque accipiendum dis- 

 picitur expenditurque, <0c., Harderwick, 1637. 



3 Jacobi Gothofredi De Imperio Maris, in Hagemeier, I>e Imperio Maris 

 Variorum Dissertationes. 



