CHARLES I. : FISHERIES AND RESERVED WATERS 217 



three months' work of 7500. : The Scottish burghs protested 

 against the introduction of the Hollanders, which they said 

 would ruin the whole trade and navigation of the kingdom and 

 completely destroy the native fisheries. They petitioned the 

 Privy Council to restrain strangers from resorting to the North 

 and West Isles, pointing out that from the numbers of the 

 Hollanders, their numerous ships and great commerce, they 

 would draw the whole trade of the country into their hands, 

 as they had done everywhere they had gone ; and in a petition 

 to the king they accused them of " great oppressions " in the 

 Isles and on the coasts of the kingdom, and declared that by a 

 " pretendit libertie obtenit of his father " they were " the over- 

 throwes of the haill fischeing of this cuntry." 2 



Mr John Hay, the Town-Clerk of Edinburgh, was despatched 

 to London to the king, to ask that the country might be freed 

 of the objectionable Hollanders and the Seaforth charter with- 

 drawn ; and to declare that the Scottish burghs would them- 

 selves undertake the whole of the fishings at the Lewes and 

 erect a burgh there. Secretary Coke, full of the fishery scheme, 

 took advantage of Hay's presence to obtain from him a detailed 

 account of Lewis and its fisheries, and of the Dutch fishings on 

 the coast of Scotland, which, it was said, sometimes employed a 

 fleet of 3000 busses; and from the information acquired an 

 " estimate of the charge of a fishing to be established in the 

 island of Lewes in Scotland " was prepared. This document 

 showed that ten Scottish fisher-boats, of from twenty-five to 

 thirty tons each, might be bought for 1200, and other ten 

 boats, of twelve to fourteen tons, for a proportionately smaller 

 sum. Each of the large boats was to be equipped with 120 

 nets of twenty yards in length, and the smaller boats with 

 forty nets of the same dimensions ; and it was calculated that 



1 State Papers, Dom., clii. 63, 71 ; clxxx. 97. Byrnes' report is printed in full 

 by Mackenzie (op. cit., 591). The master of one of the Dutch busses, who trans- 

 ported Dymes from Lewis to the mainland, told him that the herrings were in 

 such great abundance that they were sometimes constrained to cast them into 

 the sea again, they having more in half their nets than they were able to save, 

 " and he was of opinion that if there had bene a thousand Busses more there was 

 fish enough for them all." 



2 Rec. Convent. Roy. Burghs Scot., iii. 257, 259, 291. The arguments against the 

 Dutch were elaborated in a long document, which concluded thus : " Lastly, theis 

 Netherlanders greatnes, strength, wealth, arts, and every happines doe originally 

 proceede from their fishing in his Majesty's seas of England, Scotland, and Ireland." 



