80 CHARLES I. 
that the Hollanders refused his Majesty’s license, I shall 
avow according to your directions.” 1 Northumberland, how- 
ever, with a higher sense of honour, seems to have felt 
keenly the position thus forced upon him. Writing nearly 
three years after this time he declared his belief that Secre- 
tary Windebanke was “ the basest and falsest creature that 
lives.” ? 
The king himself had evidently decided not to again allow 
himself to be placed in such an anomalous position, and 
from this time the matter of licenses was allowed to fall 
into the background, although some Hollanders must have 
taken licenses in 1639, since we find intercession being made 
for them at Brussels by the English Ambassador, who 
asked that, as holders of license from the King of England, 
they might be indemnified for loss sustained from the 
Dunkirkers.® 
On October 21st, 1639, the Dutch Republic, by the naval 
battle of the Downs in which De Tromp signally defeated 
the Spaniards, showed all Europe how great its sea-power 
had grown. The battle had been fought within the very 
geas over which Charles claimed sovereignty, and the Dutch 
victory was thus a complete vindication of their claim of 
Mare Liberum. The Dutch were now in very truth masters 
of the seas, and British fishers and mariners for many years 
to come were compelled to submit meekly to acts of outrage 
at their hands from which Charles, engaged with troubles 
in Scotland and rebellion in England, could not protect 
them. Oliver Cromwell was to bring deliverance and estab- 
lish England as a sea-power; the naval wars of his day 
were the precursors of that series of naval wars which were 
the first cause of the decline of the Dutch fisheries. Mean- 
while the Dutch fishermen exploited the resources of the 
North Sea without further let or hindrance from England. 
1 Cal. S.P. Dom. Car. I., vol. 365, No. 59. 2 Sydney Papers, ii. 655. 
3 Qal. S.P. Dom. Car. II., vol. 339 (‘A Collection of divers particu- 
lars, etc.’’). 
