THE NEW SOCIETIES 93 
Council on behalf of the fishing company which had just 
been formed in Fifeshire, asking that no Scotsmen should 
be allowed to sell to foreigners any “ herring, whyt fish, 
lapsters, or oysters’’ until members of the company, who 
were to pay the ordinary market price, had been served. They 
also asked that no duty should be placed upon the petitioners 
besides the king’s duty and anchorage. These petitions 
were granted.! On 12th June, 1662, Matthew Anderson again 
made a complaint against the magistrates of Crail. He had 
lately made a voyage to Holland with some oysters and 
lobsters bought by him in Crail. The magistrates of Crail 
now demanded one-third of the value of these lobsters, 
although he had already paid the usual dues to the magis- 
trates of Kirkcaldy, in whose roadstead he had first arrived. 
They had, moreover, not only charged him all the usual 
anchorage and customs dues, but had imposed a tax of 
sixpence for each lobster exported from Crail, and upon 
his refusal to pay these exactions had imprisoned him in 
the tolbooth. at Crail, and fined him £20 Scots. On investi- 
gating this case, the Council found that the magistrates of 
Crail were altogether in the wrong, and ordered them to 
make no such exactions in the future.2) The members of 
the new societies for fishing were thus once more engaged 
in maintaining the privileges conferred upon them, against 
the opposition not only of their foreign competitors but of 
their fellow countrymen. 
The very fact that the fishing companies were thus seeking 
to curtail the privileges enjoyed by strangers in the Scotch 
markets, shows that the old jealousy of foreign fishermen 
was by no means dead. The Dutch, in fact, were still 
regarded as the experts in all things pertaining to fishing, 
and were therefore both feared and hated as of old. The 
members of the fishing company at Glasgow, however, were 
1 Reg. Privy Council, Scotland, vol. i. (3rd series) p. 158. 
2 Ibid. pp. 223, 231. 
