THE ROYAL FISHERY 105 



victorious over these dogged opponents or not, the business 

 of fishing must be in practical suspension until peace was 

 proclaimed. Pepys, in his Diary under date 22nd December, 

 1664, thus voices this general feeling of foreboding : 

 " To the Change, and there, among the merchants, I hear 

 fully the news of our being beaten to dirt at Guinny by 

 De Ruyter with his fleete. The particulars, as much as by 

 Sir G. Carteret afterwards I heard, I have said in a letter 

 to my Lord Sandwich this day at Portsmouth ; it being 

 almost wholly to the utter ruine of our Royall Company, 

 the reproach and shame to the whole nation." * 



The sequel brought a state of affairs more desperate 

 than even the most pessimistic could have deemed pos- 

 sible. London, ravaged by the Great Plague, devastated 

 by the Great Fire, heard in 1667 the guns of the Dutch in 

 the Medway, and witnessed the Dutch fleet supreme in the 

 Channel. Overwhelmed by the troubles of the time, the 

 Governors of the Fishery Company, in the same year that 

 saw the fortunes of England at their lowest ebb, represented 

 to the king the desperate condition of their affairs, and asked 

 that a grant of the whole power of coining and issuing 

 farthings should be given them, their intention being to 

 give twenty-one shillings' worth of farthings for one pound 

 in silver, and to retain five shillings in every pound for the 

 company. 2 The same proposal was made in 1668, it being 

 declared then that this seemed to be the only practical 

 method of supporting the work of the society. 3 



Charles, however, deeply involved in the world of intrigue, 

 had no longer the will to devote his energies towards the 

 revival of the Royal Fishery. Moreover, he knew that 



1 As the Great Fire of London, in the very next year, destroyed all the 

 books and accounts of the Fishmongers' Company, these entries in Pepys' 

 Diary have a peculiar interest. 



2 Cal. S.P. Dom. Car. II., vol. 188, No. 124. 

 3 Ibid. vol. 251, No. 162. 



