504 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



tributary to England. The English plenipotentiaries employed 

 all the arguments they could discover in Selden's Mare 

 Clausum and other similar works, and in the volume of 

 State Papers with which they were provided, to convince 

 the congress that fisheries might be "appropriated" on the 

 high seas as well as in rivers and lakes, and that the King of 

 England had the exclusive right to the fisheries off his own 

 coasts. They cited the example of Genoa with the tunny 

 fishery, the treaties between England and Denmark concerning 

 the fisheries on the Norwegian coast and at Iceland, the 

 licenses of the kings of Denmark, the English licenses to 

 French fishermen and the grant to Bruges, the Act of 

 Richard II., and the licenses forced by the Earl of Northumber- 

 land on the Hollander busses in 1636. They even displayed 

 the original documents showing King James's expostulations 

 with the Dutch in 1618, and the charter granted to Bruges. 

 It was all in vain. The times had changed. The Dutch 

 ambassadors could now afford to pass the matter off with a 

 raillery. They told Jenkins and Williamson that they " would 

 bait the herrings, as men do carps, to come and feed upon their 

 coasts, and then they would be in possession of a liberty to 

 fish " ; adding that they would then allow the English to fish 

 upon the Dutch coast without fear of molestation. More 

 seriously, they said that since no similar stipulation had been 

 allowed in any previous treaty, the States-General trusted 

 to the goodness of the king to pass over the article on that 

 occasion ; and Beverning, who was one of the Dutch represent- 

 atives, recalled how he had discussed the whole matter with 

 Cromwell in 1653, who had withdrawn the claim to the fishery. 



No one, neither the mediators nor even the French, the 

 allies of Charles, gave the English ambassadors any encourage- 

 ment to insist on the fishery article; and finally De Groot 

 informed them, in language more forcible than elegant, that his 

 countrymen would rather "burst" than submit to any ac- 

 knowledgment in that matter, and that he believed the States 

 would sooner forbid their subjects to fish at all than to ask 

 leave to do so of the crown of England. 



The English ambassadors were forced to tell the king that 

 they had no hope of obtaining consent to the article about the 

 fishery, unless indeed the Parliament (which had by this time 



