80 CHARLES I. 



that the Hollanders refused his Majesty's license, I shall 

 avow according to your directions." J Northumberland, how- 

 ever, with a higher sense of honour, seems to have felt 

 keenly the position thus forced upon him. Writing nearly 

 three years after this time he declared his belief that Secre- 

 tary Windebanke was " the basest and falsest creature that 

 lives." 2 



The king himself had evidently decided not to again allow 

 himself to be placed in such an anomalous position, and 

 from this time the matter of licenses was allowed to fall 

 into the background, although some Hollanders must have 

 taken licenses in 1639, since we find intercession being made 

 for them at Brussels by the English Ambassador, who 

 asked that, as holders of license from the King of England, 

 they might be indemnified for loss sustained from the 

 Dunkirkers. 3 



On October 21st, 1639, the Dutch Republic, by the naval 

 battle of the Downs in which De Tromp signally defeated 

 the Spaniards, showed all Europe how great its sea-power 

 had grown. The battle had been fought within the very 

 seas over which Charles claimed sovereignty, and the Dutch 

 victory was thus a complete vindication of their claim of 

 Mare Liberum. The Dutch were now hi very truth masters 

 of the seas, and British fishers and mariners for many years 

 to come were compelled to submit meekly to acts of outrage 

 at their hands from which Charles, engaged with troubles 

 in Scotland and rebellion in England, could not protect 

 them. Oliver Cromwell was to bring deliverance and estab- 

 lish England as a sea-power ; the naval wars of his day 

 were the precursors of that series of naval wars which were 

 the first cause of the decline of the Dutch fisheries. Mean- 

 while the Dutch fishermen exploited the resources of the 

 North Sea without further let or hindrance from England. 



1 Col. S.P. Dom. Car. I., vol. 365, No. 59. 2 Sydney Papers, ii. 655. 



3 Col. S.P. Dom. Car. II., vol. 339 (" A Collection of divers particu- 

 lars, etc."). 



