CHAPTER VII. 



CHARLES II. ; THE ROYAL FISHERY. 



CHARLES II., so far as the scheme of a national fishery 

 was concerned, was now in a position identical in almost 

 every respect with that in which his father had found himself 

 in 1630. The Dutch, in spite of heavy losses sustained during 

 the naval war of the Commonwealth period, still main- 

 tained their powerful fishing fleet in the North Sea, the 

 British fishing industry, compared with that of these hereditary 

 rivals, remaining small and insignificant. These facts 

 were well-known to the people at large, many of whom felt, 

 as the men of the preceding generation had done, that the 

 long continuance of such a state of affairs amounted to a 

 national disgrace. To complete the parallel, there was 

 the same crowd of pamphleteers, bent on arousing the mass 

 of the British people from the state of lethargy in which 

 they lay, by graphic accounts of the wealth derived by the 

 Dutch from their fisheries, and of the ease with which the 

 British, if they cared, might also build up a national fishery 

 which would, in similar fashion, render them rich and 

 powerful among the nations of Europe. Charles II. again, 

 like his father, was inclined to believe that there was much 

 truth in what these writers said ; he was statesman enough 

 to perceive that the future of Britain was bound up in her 

 reaping to the full those advantages naturally given by her 

 insular position, and thought, with the pamphleteers, 

 that the development of a national fishery, since it must in- 



