EARLY HISTORY OF WHALING 69 



Laurence Mellows and the " sope-makers " of the 

 City of London, which was referred by the Privy 

 Council to the Controller of Her Majesty's House- 

 hold and the two Chief Secretaries of State. 1 

 Mellows demanded eighteen pounds per ton for his 

 seed oil, and the soap-makers would only offer 

 thirteen pounds. The Council ordered the soap- 

 makers to take from Mellows eighty tons of seed oil 

 at sixteen pounds the ton, civil gage, and fifty-one 

 tons of whale oil at sixteen pounds the ton, Biscay 

 cask, and to pay ready money for the same. Upon 

 doing this the soap-makers could at their liberty use 

 both train and whale oil in making of soap for a 

 period of eighteen months. On the i4th December, 

 1579, the Privy Council ordered the Lord Mayor 

 to induce the soap-makers to buy one hundred tons 

 of seed oil from Mellows, and to report on his 

 success to the Council. 



On i9th April, 1602, seven ships went from St 

 Jean de Luz to Newfoundland for the whale 

 fisheries, and many more for the fishing. 3 There 

 is evidence scattered through the State Papers of 

 this time of a considerable impressment of Biscayan 

 whalers and mariners to strengthen the Spanish 

 fleet. 



Spitsbergen was known and spoken of up to the 

 times of Scoresby (1820) as East Greenland. 

 Consequently early references to the " Greenland " 

 whale fishery must be taken to include references to 



1 Ads of the Privy Council, 1578-80, p. 50. 



" State Pa-pers, Addenda, Domestic, 1547-65, p. 178. 



