12 THE DUTCH GRAND FISHERY 
settle the question, and, although two other embassies came 
to London in January, 1621, and December, 1621, respec- 
tively, to negotiate on the matter, no agreement had been 
made when the ambassadors finally left England in 1623. 
The Dutch were unwilling to quarrel with England, but at 
the same time they did not care to be bound down by any 
rigid international agreement which might injure their her- 
ring trade. When, therefore, they saw that no agreement 
was likely to be made which would be in the interests of 
that trade, they pursued a policy of vacillation which 
rendered all negotiation futile. 
Numerous. complaints were still made by the Scotch 
fishermen against the Hollanders, and the Lords of the 
Estates by letters dated 24th January, 1622, represented 
the case to the king, urging him to take measures to pro- 
tect his subjects.2 Afraid lest James, moved by these 
appeals, might adopt measures of coercion against the Dutch, 
the States secretly consented to grant compensation to those 
Scotchmen who had suffered loss, and later gave orders that 
Dutch fishing vessels were not to approach so near the land 
as to give offence to British fishermen, thus tacitly agreeing to 
respect the ancient rule that foreign fishermen should not 
come within sight of the British coast.? 
James, who was never the man to push things to extremes, 
henceforth contented himself with the continued asser- 
tion of the ‘Mare Clausum” theory, and the occasional 
definition of the distance which foreign fishermen must 
maintain between themselves and the coast of the British 
Isles. 
It was at this time that the project of the formation of 
a fishery company to exploit the Scotch fisheries was first 
mooted, the Duke of Lennox being the first to make the 
1 Beaujon’s Essay, pp. 173, 174, 
2 Cal. S.P. Dom. Car. II., vol. 339, Nos. 343-381. 
3 Beaujon’s Essay, p. 174. 
