230 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



A glance at the accompanying chart, indicating the boundary 

 of the " reserved " waters as claimed by the burghs, will show 

 how large an extent of the neighbouring seas was considered to 

 be necessary for the subsistence of the people. Not only were 

 all the great firths included, and the waters of the Minch and 

 within the Isles, but it will be observed that the fourteen-mile 

 limit around a very great part of the coast was drawn, not from 

 the shore, but from an ideal straight line uniting the headlands. 

 When this report from the burghs was submitted to the Privy 

 Council, they professed to find it " to be of too large an extent " ; 

 and they therefore, as they said, "out of their desire to his 

 Majesty's contentment and for the advancement of the great 

 work," proceeded to " retrench and restrict the universality of 

 the exceptions" made by the burghs. The true spirit of the 

 Council was, however, shown by the fact that their alternative 

 scheme was practically the same. They rearranged the de- 

 scription of the lines at the Orkneys and Shetlands without 

 diminishing the extent of the enclosed sea, and they carried the 

 boundary down the east instead of the west side of the Hebrides, 

 and so on to Islay. They thus reduced the area of the waters 

 proposed to be reserved by omitting only the strip of fourteen 

 miles to the west of the Hebrides. The Council declared that 

 they had reserved an area of fourteen miles off such coasts as 

 were well peopled, and where the inhabitants lived mostly by 

 fishing, and could not possibly subsist and pay their rents and 

 duties without it. They also stated that if a buss-fishing had 

 been established in Scotland, 1 the fishing would have been 

 reserved for the use and benefit of the country people, "see- 

 ing it cannot be qualified that ever any Hollanders or other 

 strangers fished in these waters." 



, In transmitting the two schemes to the commissioners in 

 London, on 31st April 1631, the Council observed that at first 

 the burghs had " stood very punctually " on the instructions at 

 first issued to the commissioners, saying there was no need to 

 particularise the reserved waters, since they had been included 

 in the Act of Union, but that they had been persuaded to 

 abandon this attitude and condescend to particulars. If this 

 was not a stroke of Scotch humour, it would indicate that the 



1 The Duke of Lennox had some time before this proposed the formation of a 

 fishery society for the purpose. 



