JAMES I. : DISPUTES WITH THE DUTCH 185 



repeatedly promised by the States should be sent to England 

 without any further delay. The embassy in question had been 

 originally proposed by the Dutch with the view of arranging 

 the differences as to the trade in cloth and the herring fishery. 

 Their diplomacy through the ordinary channels had, however, 

 been so successful in preserving their freedom of fishing, not- 

 withstanding the harassing efforts of the king, whom they 

 invariably foiled, that they preferred to procrastinate, and the 

 proposed embassy had from time to time been put off. But 

 now the minatory demands of Sir Dudley Carleton were re- 

 inforced by the insistence of the Dutch East India Company, 

 for it had been proposed in England to arrest the vessels of 

 that company in the Channel in reprisal for the wrongs done 

 to the English in the East Indies, and one of their ships had 

 just narrowly escaped capture; 1 



The Dutch ambassadors arrived in England on 27th 

 November ; 2 but notwithstanding the earnest exhortations of 

 Carleton, their instructions were confined to the " Greenland " 

 (Spitzbergen) and East Indian questions, and did not contain 

 what the king most desired full powers to treat on the 

 herring fishery. 



James had been looking forward to this embassy as pro- 

 viding an opportunity for the final settlement of the fishery 

 dispute. Sir Dudley Carleton had informed the States-General 

 that the king wished to go into the matter of the treaties on 

 which their claim to liberty of fishing was in great measure 

 based, adding jesuitically that it was probably with the view 

 of confirming them. The king in reality felt that owing to 

 the dissensions in the Low Countries and the general political 

 state of Europe, the time was specially opportune for negoti- 

 ating a treaty in his favour. 3 He had accordingly made 



1 Carleton, Letter*, 312. 



- They were Johan van Ooch, Ewout van der Dussen for Oeklerland ami 

 Holland, and Joachim Liens for Zealand. Holland had at first intended to send 

 Grotius. Ibid., 306. 



* Among the Cicsar papers in the British Museum (Lansd. MSS., 142, fol. 383) 

 there is one dated 23rd December 1618, containing extracts "noted out of a book 

 called Mare Liberum give de Jure quod Batavia, Ac., Lugd. Bat., 1609," together 

 with notes from Welwood's De Dominio Mnrit, answering the assertions i that 

 book. It was doubtless a memorandum to be used in the conferences with the 

 Dutch ambassadors ; and on the back of it are scrawled jottings difficult to 

 decipher, headed, "The Kinges Speeche touching the Dutchemeu's fishing upon 



