UNDER THE TDDORS 105 



should tax foreigners for fishing in the British seas and exer- 

 cise jurisdiction over foreign vessels passing through them 

 remained as much a dream as the scheme of Hitchcock. 1 It 

 need not be supposed that such measures as Dee proposed 

 were intrinsically distasteful either to the Queen or to Cecil. 

 If a navy could have been acquired so easily, or a much 

 less sum than 100,000 gathered from foreign fishermen in 

 a " friendly " way, as Dee supposed, neither the sovereign nor 

 the statesman was likely to let the chance go by. But they 

 knew better than the philosopher, or than the Stuarts in the 

 next century, that a policy of the kind would involve them 

 in difficulties with other Powers, with France and Spain as 

 well as with the Protestant Netherlands. 



So far from adopting any policy of this nature or making 

 any claim to a special sovereignty in the surrounding seas, 

 Elizabeth steadily opposed all claims which other nations put 

 forward to mare clausum. Long before Grotius, she was the 

 champion of the free sea, although it must be admitted that 

 the action of the English Queen was no more based on con- 

 siderations of the general good of mankind than were the 

 efforts of the Dutch publicist : both had in view the interests 

 of their native land. Elizabeth's motive was to secure liberty 

 of trade and fishery for her subjects, which was threatened 

 by the pretensions of Spain and Portugal on the one hand 

 and by Denmark on the other. The Portuguese pretension 

 was of long standing. When that nation in the latter half 

 of the fifteenth century had pushed her way down the west 

 coast of Africa and ultimately round the Cape of Good Hope 

 to the East Indies, she obtained from the Pope various bulls 

 securing her in her possessions, and granting sovereign authority 

 to the crown of Portugal in all the lands it might discover in 

 the Atlantic from Cape Bojador to the Indies. By an inhuman 

 doctrine established during the Crusades, Christian princes were 

 supposed to have the right to invade, ravage, and acquire the 

 territories of infidel nations on the plea of extending the sway 

 of the Christian Church ; and the Pope, from his supreme 

 authority over all temporal things, disposed of these heathen 



1 In 1597 Dee expressed his grief and surprise that so little had been done or 

 attempted with regard to the sovereignty of the sea, " and so uiy labours (after a 

 sort) vaynely employed." MS. 



