THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 377 



Holland had obtained this agreement as a shelter against 

 competition by Scotch fishermen, whose laws left them at 

 liberty to fish at an earlier date, and whose coasts lay so near 

 the herring seas as to enable them to cure their fish ashore. 

 As " new " or first herring was sometimes paid tenfold 

 prices, it was of great consequence to be first in the market ; 

 and this privilege Holland hoped to secure by binding 

 Hamburg over to apply the Dutch law to foreign herring. 



In the course of the seventeenth century, however, 

 Hamburg's execution of the treaty seems to have been 

 such as from time to time to occasion recrimination on the 

 Dutch side. In 1668, a plan formed by some citizens of 

 Hamburg to fish for herring very early in the season and 

 pack the fish in Dutch barrels was detected by the Fishery 

 College and protested against by the States of Holland.* 

 In the first years of the eighteenth century, the British 

 herring fisheries having meanwhile acquired considerable 

 development, Hamburg was eagerly sought as a market for 

 Scotch herring. Hamburg dealers were, on their side, 

 peculiarly anxious to have their market stocked early, and 

 often complained of having to put off their expeditions to 

 the inland of Germany, till herring caught on or after the 

 24th of June and cured at sea could be brought to their 

 market.f There were two ways of gratifying this eagerness 

 for early herring : firstly, to fish before June 24th, and 

 secondly, to sail to Hamburg straight from the fishery. 

 Dutch fishermen were of course precluded from the former 

 method, and as their law forbade them to carry their 

 herring elsewhere than to their own ports to be assayed and 

 branded, they were likewise obliged to refrain from the 

 latter, and thereby placed at a very great disadvantage. 



* Res. Holl. 1668, p. 173. 

 t Ibid. 1715, p. 724. 



