OTJR NEGLECTED FISHERIES. 23 



few meals, it would seem, for so many ; but it doubtless means three meals apiece on the 

 passage from Calais or Dunkirk to Dover. The retinue of " followers " sometimes aggregated 

 as many as 300. During this period, however, Monson made some careful notes on the Dutch 

 fisheries, then a most important source of revenue to that nation, while ours were almost 

 entirely overlooked. Nine thousand Dutch vessels were kept in constant employment by 

 these fisheries, a considerable proportion of which were on our own coasts, and conducted 

 under our very noses. He was employed at intervals for two years in combating similar 

 encroachments on the part of French fishermen. " The adventurous spirit of the age/' 

 says Southey, "was averse to an employment so tranquil and so near home." Men would 

 rather seek the uttermost parts of the earth in a vain search for wealth than settle down 

 to a certain, safe, and profitable employment. Monson waxes eloquently indignant on the 

 subject in one of his chapters. " My meaning is," he says, " not to leave our fruitful soil 

 untilled, our seas unfrequented, our islands unpeopled, or to seek remote and strange 

 countries disinhabited, and uncivil Indians untamed, where nothing appears to us but 

 earth, wood, and water, at our first arrival ; for all other hope must depend on our 

 labour and costly expenses, on the adventures of the sea, on the honesty of undertakers ; 

 and all these at last produce nothing but tobacco* a new-invented useless weed, as too 

 much use and custom make it apparent. * * * * You shall be made to know, that 

 though you be born on an island seated in the ocean, frequented by invisible fish, swimming 

 from one shore to the other, yet your experience has not taught you the benefits and 

 blessings arising from that fish. I doubt not but to give you that light therein, that you 

 shall confess yourselves blinded, and be willing to blow from you the foul mist that has 

 been an impediment to your sight; you shall be awakened from your drowsy sleep, and 

 rouse yourselves to follow this best business that ever was presented to England, or king 

 thereof; nay, I will be bold to say, to any state in the world. I will not except the 

 discoveries of the West Indies by Columbus ; an act of greatest renown, of greatest profit, 

 and that has been of greatest consequence to the Spanish nation." Exaggerated as all 

 this may appear, Monson was right in his estimation of the profitable nature of the business. 

 At that time the Dutch used to vend their fish in every European market, and obtain in 

 exchange the productions of all countries. Monson also remarks on the carelessness of the 

 English at that time in regard to lobsters, oysters, and lampreys, all of which the Dutch 

 obtained from our coasts. In order to encourage the fisheries an Act had been passed 

 prohibiting butchers from killing meat in Lent, and Monson wished it to be made com- 

 pulsory on the rural population to consume fish. " Neither," says he, " will it seem a thing 

 unreasonable to enjoin every yeoman and farmer within the kingdom to take a barrel of 

 fish for their own spending, considering they save the value thereof in other victuals ; and 

 that it is no more than the fisherman will do to them to take off their wheat, malt, butter, 

 and cheese for their food to sea." This agitation did good in calling attention to a neglected 

 industry. The great enemies of the fishermen then were the pirates who infested the coasts, 

 and who, if they ran short of provisions, looked upon them as their natural providers, rarely, 



* This contemptuous allusion refers of course to the tobacco brought from the newly-formed plantations in 

 Virginia. 



