476 THE HISTORY OF DUTCH SEA FISHERIES. 



fisheries with Denmark dates from the year 1615, just 

 after the first successes of the Arctic Company. On 

 February i8th of the said year the King of Denmark 

 wrote to the States-General about the Dutch whaling 

 expeditions, and claimed for himself the exclusive right to 

 allow his subjects to whale off Greenland, to the exclusion 

 of all foreigners unless provided with a Danish licence. 

 The reason given was, that " the waters in question are off 

 the northerly shores of our Empire." Some contribution 

 from Dutch whalers had already been pretended to by 

 a Danish ship of war in the season of 1615, but had 

 then been refused by the former on the plea that they 

 knew of no title to the exaction. The British claims 

 to the whaling monopoly off Spitzbergen probably moved 

 Denmark to a similar measure relative to Greenland. 

 But the States-General, in their answer to the Royal Dane, 

 politely but peremptorily declined the latter claim as well 

 as the former ; and Denmark preparing for violent inter- 

 ference with the Dutch whalers, the States accommodated 

 the latter with artillery and ammunition, besides granting 

 them such convoy as kept the Danes in respect.* 



Next, in 1635, the Danish Sovereign preferred similar 

 pretensions to a fishing monopoly off Iceland. A letter 

 from the King remonstrating against the Dutch fishing 

 off the shores of that island was laid by the tates-General 

 before those of Holland, who took the advice of the Arctic 

 Company upon it. The latter were just then engaged 

 in difficulties about the renovation of their charter, and 

 owing, perhaps, to this circumstance, although the King 

 of Denmark renewed his protestations, and even employed 

 a Dutch merchant residing at Copenhagen to remind 

 the States of them, he got no answer for two years. A 



* Res. St. Gen., April ^trr 28th ; May nth, I2th, and June 2nd, 1616. 



