324 HISTORY OF THE OUTER HEBRIDES. 



Englishmen must have been trading illegally, an altogether 

 improbable supposition. Stornoway is certainly entitled 

 to a patent of arms, with supporters, as a Royal burgh,* 

 if proof that it actually exercised the privileges, and 

 occupied the status, of a free burgh Royal, justifies the 

 grant! 



For a time, the fishing operations in Lewis appear to 

 have been carried on with success, merchants from London, 

 and even goldsmiths, venturing their lives and their capital 

 in the far-off island, hoping to reap a golden harvest from 

 the treasures of the Minch. Then financial difficulties 

 arose. Some of the shareholders, disappointed by the 

 results, or finding safer outlets for their capital, failed to 

 meet the calls on their shares. The Association headed 

 by the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, had established, 

 about 1633, a factory in Lewis, which seems to have been 

 less successful than that owned by the Lord Treasurer's 

 Company. Captain John Smith, author of Trade and 

 Fishing of Great Britain, had been sent by the Earl, in 

 1633, to report upon the Shetland and Lewis fisheries. 

 Captain Smith's report on the Dutch fishermen is interest- 

 ing. He tells us that the Hollanders a people of " constant 

 labour and unwearied industry " monopolised the Shetland 

 fisheries. They had 1,500 herring busses, each of about 

 80 tons, with about 400 dogger boats of 60 tons and 

 upwards, for the cod and ling fishing, the whole being con- 

 voyed by over twenty warships, each carrying thirty guns. 

 Smith states that the " ' composition ' of the Dutchmen was 

 an annual rent of ;ioo,ooo sterling and .100,000 in hand," 

 which had never been paid, the arrears amounting to no 

 less than two and a half million pounds.! This report was 

 distinctly discouraging to new-comers, and it doubtless 



* In 1898, on the initiative of Provost Anderson, an attempt was made to 

 assert the claim of Stornoway for recognition as a Royal burgh. The attempt 

 was based upon the charter to Colin, first Earl of Seaforth, which, as we have 

 seen, was withdrawn. The Convention of burghs decided to offer no opposi- 

 tion to the claim, but, owing to constitutional difficulties, no practical result 

 followed. 



t The Dutch gave ^30,000 in 1636 for leave to fish on the coasts of Britain, 

 hus compounding, apparently, for bygone debts. 



