502 THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE SEA 



they had done in regard to the Merlin. They were quite 

 willing, they said, to do the thing for the future, but it was 

 unreasonable to ask them to avow so openly that they had 

 been in the wrong in not doing it hitherto. To this the 

 English replied that it was most certainly and notoriously an 

 ancient right of the crown of England, of which they had 

 proofs in all ages, and that to omit the words would be to 

 accept of the ceremony as a courtesy and not as a right. 



At this stage, however, the king sent them a new article 

 about the flag, defining in part the limits within which the 

 Dutch were to be asked to strike, and these were from Cape 

 Finisterre to the North Cape in Norway. These surprising 

 boundaries had been suggested a year or two before as the 

 limits of the British seas by the Masters of the Trinity House 

 (p. 478), and no doubt Charles meant them to be so considered. 

 They were derived primarily from Selden's Mare Clausum, 

 and the southern limit, Cape Finisterre, had been for some time 

 incorporated in the Admiralty instructions. 1 The Dutch were 

 thus to be asked to strike to English ships along almost 

 the whole extent of the western coasts of Europe, a distance 

 exceeding two thousand miles. 



The English plenipotentiaries did not like this article. They 

 informed Lord Arlington that when they were preparing the 

 one they had already submitted, they had wished there had 

 been means to ascertain the bounds of our seas as well as there 

 was for clearing up the point regarding whole fleets striking to 

 a single ship; but they had concluded that the king and 

 the Lords of the Committee (for foreign affairs) looked upon 

 it as a thing so invidious and difficult as not to be attempted 

 at that juncture. They explained that they would receive no 

 assistance from the French ambassador or the mediators, all of 

 whom, they clearly perceived, had difficulty in containing them- 

 selves from disputing the right of striking at all. As long as 

 they confined the claim to the British seas they were not afraid 

 of opposition, since they had overwhelming evidence as to the 



1 Perm was in error in supposing that " Finisterre " in the subsequent treaty 

 was finis terra;, and meant the Land's End in England (Granville Penn, Memorials 

 of the Professional Life and Times of Sir William Penn, ii. 255). It was de- 

 scribed as "Finisterre, in Galicia," by the Dutch ambassadors in 1668. See 

 p. 469. 



