44 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



a monopoly of the fishing industry in the waters adjacent 

 to these lands. 1 This meant that both the land and the 

 seas from Acadia to the Delaware were no longer free to 

 English subjects but were placed under the exclusive con- 

 trol of the new company by the sanction of the king. By 

 this patent, all persons without license first obtained from 

 the Council were forbidden to visit the coast, under pain 

 of the forfeiture of the vessel and its cargo. Fishermen 

 were prevented from landing and procuring wood to con- 

 struct stages for drying their fish. 2 



A spirited controversy arose immediately at the attempt 

 of the Council to enforce such preposterous claims. The 

 Council demanded that each fishing vessel should pay a 

 sum equal to about eighty-three cents per ton, an amount 

 estimated at more than one hundred dollars for every Eng- 

 lish fishing vessel that was accustomed to come to the New 

 England shores. 3 Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando 

 Gorges, was commissioned in 1623 to come to New Eng- 

 land as lieutenant-governor over all the country known by 

 that name. In the same year the Council sent Francis 

 West, as admiral of the seas, with power to restrain such 

 ships as came without license either to fish or to trade 

 on the coast. The matter of collecting tribute and of 

 driving off unlicensed vessels was too great a task for the 

 men to accomplish, especially as neither was an officer of 

 the government. Captain West found the fishermen too 

 numerous and too stubborn in maintaining their rights 

 to be coerced by force; he left the region, and the right 

 of freedom to fish was never again interrupted on the New 

 England coast. 



In England, the question of free fishing soon found its 



1 McDonald, Select Charters and other Documents, 1606-1776, p. 

 28. 



2 Winsor, III, p. 296. 



3 Sabine p. 43. 



