THE ROYAL FISHERY 105 
victorious over these dogged opponents or not, the business 
of fishing must be in practical suspension until peace was 
proclaimed. Pepys, in his Diary under date 22nd December, 
1664, thus voices this general feeling of foreboding :— 
“To the Change, and there, among the merchants, I hear 
fully the news of our being beaten to dirt at Guinny by 
De Ruyter with his fleete. The particulars, as much as by 
Sir G. Carteret afterwards I heard, I have said in a letter 
to my Lord Sandwich this day at Portsmouth; it being 
almost wholly to the utter ruine of our Royall Company, 
the reproach and shame to the whole nation.” 1 
The sequel brought a state of affairs more desperate 
than even the most pessimistic could have deemed pos- 
sible. London, ravaged by the Great Plague, devastated 
by the Great Fire, heard in 1667 the guns of the Dutch in 
the Medway, and witnessed the Dutch fleet supreme in the 
Channel. Overwhelmed by the troubles of the time, the 
Governors of the Fishery Company, in the same year that 
saw the fortunes of England at their lowest ebb, represented 
to the king the desperate condition of their affairs, and asked 
that a grant of the whole power of coining and issuing 
farthings should be given them, their intention being to 
give twenty-one shillings’ worth of farthings for one pound 
in silver, and to retain five shillings in every pound for the 
company.” The same proposal was made in 1668, it being 
declared then that this seemed to be the only practical 
method of supporting the work of the society.’ 
Charles, however, deeply involved in the world of intrigue, 
had no longer the will to devote his energies towards the 
revival of the Royal Fishery. Moreover, he knew that 
1 As the Great Fire of London, in the very next year, destroyed all the 
books and accounts of the Fishmongers’ Company, these entries in Pepys’ 
Diary have a peculiar interest. 
2Cal. S.P. Dom. Car. II., vol. 188, No. 124. 
3 Ibid. vol. 251, No. 162. 
