THE NEW SOCIETIES 93 



Council on behalf of the fishing company which had just 

 been formed in Fifeshire, asking that no Scotsmen should 

 be allowed to sell to foreigners any " herring, whyt fish, 

 lapsters, or oysters " until members of the company, who 

 were to pay the ordinary market price, had been served. They 

 also asked that no dutj^ should be placed upon the petitioners 

 besides the king's duty and anchorage. These petitions 

 were granted. ^ On 12th June, 1662, Matthew Anderson again 

 made a complaint against the magistrates of Crail. He had 

 lately made a voyage to Holland with some oysters and 

 lobsters bought by him in Crail. The magistrates of Crail 

 now demanded one-third of the value of these lobsters, 

 although he had already paid the usual dues to the magis- 

 trates of Kirkcaldy, m whose roadstead he had first arrived. 

 The}^ had, moreover, not only charged him all the usual 

 anchorage and customs dues, but had imposed a tax of 

 sixpence for each lobster exported from Crail, and upon 

 his refusal to pay these exactions had imprisoned him in 

 the tolbooth at Crail, and fined him £20 Scots. On investi- 

 gating this case, the Council found that the magistrates of 

 Crail were altogether in the wrong, and ordered them to 

 make no such exactions in the future. ^ The members of 

 the new societies for fishing were thus once more engaged 

 in maintaining the privileges conferred upon them, against 

 the opposition not only of their foreign competitors but of 

 their fellow countrjonen. 



The very fact that the fishing companies were thus seeking 

 to curtail the privileges enjoyed by strangers in the Scotch 

 markets, shows that the old jealousy of foreign fishermen 

 was by no means dead. The Dutch, in fact, were still 

 regarded as the experts in all things pertaining to fishing, 

 and were therefore both feared and hated as of old. The 

 members of the fishing company at Glasgow, however, were 



1 Reg. Privy Council, Scotland, vol. i. (3rd series) p. 158. 

 ^Ibid. pp. 223, 231. 



