THE FIRST DUTCH WAR 389 



of fish, great or small, without any license or pass being 

 required. If the fishermen were forced by storms, pirates, 

 enemies, or any other cause, to go to land, they desired that 

 they should be courteously received and well treated in the 

 ports of either country, and permitted to depart with their 

 ships and cargoes, and if they had not broken their cargoes, 

 without paying any customs or dues. 1 These stipulations 

 paraphrased corresponding provisions in the Intercursus Mag- 

 nus, and rather more favourably to the Dutch. If they had 

 been accepted, they would have destroyed the English policy 

 which had been pursued, though fitfully, from 1609 to the 

 outbreak of the Civil War, of requiring foreigners to pay 

 tribute and take out licenses for fishing on the British coasts. 



Some of the other articles proposed by the Dutch were directed 

 against the claims put forward in Selden's Mare Clausum, and 

 by Charles himself, to a special dominion and jurisdiction of 

 England in the surrounding seas. If the freedom of commerce 

 and navigation was to be assured, it would be necessary, it 

 was said, for both countries to equip fleets to secure the safety 

 and liberty of the subjects of both, to purge the sea of pirates 

 and sea-rovers, and to preserve the security of commerce and 

 of fishing. The proposition was that each state should set 

 forth a fleet yearly, its strength to be fixed by mutual agree- 

 ment, and the ocean as well as the North Sea and the Mediter- 

 ranean, with their straits and channels, were to be patrolled 

 by the two fleets, each under its own admiral and flag. This 

 was in effect asking the Commonwealth not only for equality 

 of sovereignty on the sea, but for the assistance of England 

 in protecting the immense commerce and shipping of the 

 United Provinces. They desired that each nation should 

 shield and defend the merchant vessels of the other, and help 

 to recover them if taken by an enemy. 



Among other proposals were that men-of-war, but only in 

 small numbers, should be allowed freely into the ports and 

 havens of the other, and were not to be subjected to visitation 

 and search, the showing of the commission to be sufficient ; and 

 that no sea-rovers were to be tolerated in harbours, and no 



1 See Appendix K. Narrative of the Ambassadors, p. 23. Aitzema, op. cit., 

 iii. 698-700. MS. of Duke of Portland in Hist. MS8. Com. Thirteenth Report, 

 App. I., 605. Tideman, op. cit., 47, 48, 49. Geddea op. cit. 178. 



