500 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



now be claimed under the Burgundy treaties. If they were 

 still in force, why had the citizens of Bruges in the Spanish 

 Netherlands, subjects of the King of Spain, who was the 

 successor and descendant of the Dukes of Burgundy, and the 

 very people in whose favour the Magnus Intercursus was 

 made, petitioned the King of England as lately as 1666 

 for a license to fish in the British seas, a privilege which 

 had been granted to them ? x To this the Dutch replied 

 that the right to the fishery did not spring from the treaty 

 of 1495, which had been made merely to avoid contests that 

 previously occurred. As the result of conferences with the 

 Dutch representatives, the Swedish mediators informed Jenkins 

 and Williamson that the States-General would not consent to 

 an annual payment for the right of fishery, but they suggested, 

 as the Prince of Orange had done once before, that the matter 

 might be compromised by the payment of a lump sum. 

 Charles declined this proposal, but he reduced the amount of 

 the yearly payment he asked by half to 5000 for the English 

 fishery and 1000 for the Scottish. The conference was at 

 the same time informed that it was then, and always would 

 be, the "passion" both of king and subject in England to 

 assert and preserve the great royalty of the fishery. 



Since the Dutch would not agree to the payment of an 

 annual tribute for the liberty to fish, and Charles would not 

 agree to a lump sum, the mediator suggested that the Dutch 

 might be asked for a small yearly payment for the privilege 

 of drying their nets on shore. This ingenious device roused 

 the suspicions of the English delegates, who feared the tabling 

 of a clause which would represent the tribute as for the use 

 of the land and not for the liberty of fishing. Charles agreed 

 with them in refusing the compromise, telling them that the 

 article about the fishing was " to be barely and solely for the 

 liberty of fishing on his Majesty's coasts," and was not to be 

 mixed up with any question of drying nets. They were also 

 told to make it clear that his license was to be a "successive 

 permission" only, from his Majesty to the Dutch, for liberty 

 to fish, and to take care not to part wholly with his right 

 in the fishery to them. By an arrangement of this nature 

 Charles and his successors would have been free to follow the 



1 See p. 461. 



