UNDER THE TUDORS 



99 



The scheme of Dr John Dee was very different from that of 

 Hitchcock. A mathematician, an astrologer, a reputed magician, 

 and, above all, an accomplished scholar, he looked at the subject 

 from another point of view. Well acquainted with the writings 

 of the Italian jurists and the practice of the Italian states, he 

 expounded the view that the fisheries and the sovereignty in the 

 British seas pertained to the crown of England, and that 

 foreigners should be compelled to pay tribute for the liberty of 



Fig. 2. Hitchcock"; representation of the English and Flemish fisheries. 



fishing within them. It is the philosopher of Mortlake, indeed, 

 who must be recognised as the literary pioneer of the claims to 

 the sovereignty of the sea which were put forward by England 

 in the seventeenth century. In 1577 he published a book 



tliree centuries one learns with regret (from his letter preserved at Hatfield) that 

 he had to petition the Privy Council, "for his relief and maintenance in these his 

 now declining years" (lf>96), to cause every innkeeper, &c., to purchase from him, 

 for sixpence, and put up publicly, a printed table, or " breviate," describing the 

 " benefits that growe to this Realme by the Observance of Fish-Daies. " 



