500 FISHERIES AND FISHERMEN 



which delighted the honest burghers no less than their 

 wives. Half the art and glory of the Flemish cities are 

 built upon no more substantial foundation than the herring. 

 Germany supplied them with iron, wine, and all sorts of 

 arms and munitions, while Nuremberg, having nothing 

 apparently very attractive in its markets, was forced to 

 send large sums in ready money, which is after all not the 

 least attractive of commodities. To such a height did this 

 industry attain that during the war of the Spanish Succes- 

 sion, its promoters were enabled to pay the States-General 

 a German crown for every ten barrels of herrings with a 

 view to maintaining a sufficient naval force to defend the 

 busses from privateers. Sober calculations made with 

 regard to the annual revenue derived from these sources 

 show that Holland took more by these fisheries annually 

 than Sweden could produce in twelve years from all her 

 iron mines put together. So much for the expatriated 

 Englishman. 



During the eighteenth century the current still continued 

 to set in the same direction. By an Act of George the First 

 it was provided that ^"2000 a year should be applied to the 

 encouragement and protection of the fisheries of Scotland, 

 and about the middle of the century was founded the Free 

 Fisheries Company, which had the Royal Exchange for its 

 head-quarters, and transacted considerable business in the 

 seas off Yarmouth and the north of Scotland. The letter- 

 book of the Company gives a suggestive hint as to the 

 political condition of the country, in the shape of a com- 

 munication under date July 1756, from the secretary to a 

 certain grocer and " considerable magistrate of the good town 

 of Salisbury," asking him whether, as there were so many 

 German troops quartered in the neighbourhood, he could 

 not get the commanding officer to order some of his fine 



