THE FIRST DUTCH WAR 411 



comprised the proclamation of James in 1609, and of Charles 

 in 1636, forbidding unlicensed fishing; some of the letters that 

 passed between the English Government and their ambassadors 

 at The Hague ; extracts from Sir John Boroughs' Sovereignty 

 of the British Seas, which was first published in the previous 

 year ; and a few other papers of little importance. The purpose 

 of the book was better served by Needham's bitter if rather 

 frothy invective against the Dutch, and by his ranting appeals 

 to English patriotism to conquer the foe and establish our 

 interests on the sea beyond the possibility of future question. 1 

 Selden was still alive, and the translation was doubtless 

 made with his concurrence, whatever he may have thought 

 of it. He was himself soon drawn into the controversy which 

 the book evoked. Graswinckel, the Dutch lawyer who had 

 been chosen by the States-General in 1636 to reply to Selden's 

 Mare Clausum, and whose neglected treatise had ever since 

 being lying in the secret archives at The Hague, again entered 

 the lists. His shaft was ostensibly directed against a certain 

 Italian writer, P. B. Burgus, who had published a work eleven 

 years before in support of the right of Genoa to the dominion 

 of the Ligurian Sea. 2 There was no apparent reason why 

 the Dutch lawyer should be at the pains to attempt to refute 

 a claim so remote and after so long an interval; but Burgus 

 quoted largely from Mare Clausum, and Graswinckel seized 

 upon the opportunity to attack Selden, and to gratify his 

 feelings by making use of his early abortive treatise, under 

 the guise of replying to the Italian author. And his attack 

 on Selden was very bitter. 3 On the main question, the familiar 

 arguments were adduced against the appropriation of seas, 



1 In some dedicatory verses Neptune thus addresses the Great Commonwealth 

 of England : 



" Go on (great State !) and make it known 

 Thou never wilt forsake thine own, 



Nor from thy purpose start : 

 But that thou wilt thy power dilate, 

 Since Narrow Seas are found too straight 



For thy capacious heart. 



So shall thy rule, and mine, have large extent : 

 Yet not so large, as just, and permanent." 



The work appeared when Tromp was lord of the narrow seas ; the preface is dated 

 19th November, the day before Blake's defeat. 



'* De Dominio Serenissimce Genvensis Reipublicce in Mari Ligustico. Rome, 1641. 



3 Marts Liberi vindicice adversus Petrum liaptistam Burgum Ligustici Maritimi 

 Dominii Assertorcm. Hagae Comitum, 1652. 



