Chapter XIII: CHARLES II.--continued (2)

The terms of peace now offered, it will be observed, were much less exacting than those demanded in the previous year, and the request for an express acknowledgment of the king’s sovereignty of the sea was dropped. The Dutch plenipotentiaries at the outset of the proceedings said little difficulty would be raised about the question of the flag, but they demurred to the demand to pay tribute for liberty of fishing.[908] This thorny subject was threshed out on either side with all the old arguments which were used in the times of James and Cromwell. The Dutch pled possession, prescription, treaties; the English replied that the treaties had expired in subsequent wars, and were abrogated by the separation of the Provinces from the House of Burgundy, with whom the treaties were made. A new point was raised to show that no right could now be claimed under the Burgundy treaties. If they were still in force, why had the citizens of Bruges in the Spanish Netherlands, subjects of the King of Spain, who was the successor and descendant of the Dukes of Burgundy, and the very people in whose favour the Magnus Intercursus was made, petitioned the King of England as lately as 1666 for a license to fish in the British seas, a privilege which had been granted to them?[909] To this the Dutch replied that the right to the fishery did not spring from the treaty of 1495, which had been made merely to avoid contests that previously occurred. As the result of conferences with the Dutch representatives, the Swedish mediators informed Jenkins and Williamson that the States-General would not consent to an annual payment for the right of fishery, but they suggested, as the Prince of Orange had done once before, that the matter might be compromised by the payment of a lump sum. Charles declined this proposal, but he reduced the amount of the yearly payment he asked by half--to £5000 for the English fishery and £1000 for the Scottish. The conference was at the same time informed that it was then, and always would be, the “passion” both of king and subject in England to assert and preserve the great royalty of the fishery.

Since the Dutch would not agree to the payment of an annual tribute for the liberty to fish, and Charles would not agree to a lump sum, the mediator suggested that the Dutch might be asked for a small yearly payment for the privilege of drying their nets on shore. This ingenious device roused the suspicions of the English delegates, who feared the tabling of a clause which would represent the tribute as for the use of the land and not for the liberty of fishing. Charles agreed with them in refusing the compromise, telling them that the article about the fishing was “to be barely and solely for the liberty of fishing on his Majesty’s coasts,” and was not to be mixed up with any question of drying nets. They were also told to make it clear that his license was to be a “successive permission” only, from his Majesty to the Dutch, for liberty to fish, and to take care, not to part wholly with his right in the fishery to them. By an arrangement of this nature Charles and his successors would have been free to follow the example of the kings of Denmark in dealing with the dues at the Sound--that is, in gradually raising the amount.[910]

Passing from this subject to the question of the flag, it was soon apparent that the Dutch had been too sanguine in thinking there would be little difficulty in dealing with it. The mediators, in drawing up a protocol of the English demands, had modified the article put in concerning the flag. The English had confined themselves to the bare words “the right of the flag” (“le droit du pavillon”), to which the Swedes added, “in the manner your Excellencies (the Dutch ambassadors) projected.” The Dutch, in short, had expanded the meaning of the nineteenth article of the treaty of Breda so as to omit the troublesome and objectionable words “the British seas,” their proposed article being “that ships of the United Provinces meeting British ships _at sea_ should lower the top-sail and the flag, in such manner as the same had ever been previously observed.” Jenkins and Williamson strongly opposed the omission of the phrase “the British seas.” They declared that the King of England had a special right and immemorial prerogative in those particular seas, but if he grasped at the same honour in all places, not only the Dutch but all the world besides would have reason to dispute it with him. They said further that the king wished that yachts, by name, and all vessels whatsoever in his service and carrying his colours, flag, or jack, should have the same honour paid to them. They also objected to the clause “in such manner as,” &c., as being vague and open to misunderstanding, and insisted that it should be set down clearly what the Dutch were to do and how they were to do it in the future. They wished, in short, to bind the Dutch by an express stipulation to the view that the meaning of the clause in the previous treaties was that whole fleets should strike to any single vessel in the king’s service in the British seas, while leaving “the British seas” undetermined; and they tabled an article to that effect. Both the Dutch and the mediators objected to this clause as asserting positively that to have been the custom in former times, and saying that to admit it would be to condemn themselves in what they had done in regard to the _Merlin_. They were quite willing, they said, to do the thing for the future, but it was unreasonable to ask them to avow so openly that they had been in the wrong in not doing it hitherto. To this the English replied that it was most certainly and notoriously an ancient right of the crown of England, of which they had proofs in all ages, and that to omit the words would be to accept of the ceremony as a courtesy and not as a right.

At this stage, however, the king sent them a new article about the flag, defining in part the limits within which the Dutch were to be asked to strike, and these were from Cape Finisterre to the North Cape in Norway. These surprising boundaries had been suggested a year or two before as the limits of the British seas by the Masters of the Trinity House (p. 478), and no doubt Charles meant them to be so considered. They were derived primarily from Selden’s _Mare Clausum_, and the southern limit, Cape Finisterre, had been for some time incorporated in the Admiralty instructions.[911] The Dutch were thus to be asked to strike to English ships along almost the whole extent of the western coasts of Europe, a distance exceeding two thousand miles.

The English plenipotentiaries did not like this article. They informed Lord Arlington that when they were preparing the one they had already submitted, they had wished there had been means to ascertain the bounds of our seas as well as there was for clearing up the point regarding whole fleets striking to a single ship; but they had concluded that the king and the Lords of the Committee (for foreign affairs) looked upon it as a thing so invidious and difficult as not to be attempted at that juncture. They explained that they would receive no assistance from the French ambassador or the mediators, all of whom, they clearly perceived, had difficulty in containing themselves from disputing the right of striking at all. As long as they confined the claim to the British seas they were not afraid of opposition, since they had overwhelming evidence as to the usage. But if they insisted on the limits of Cape Finisterre and the North Cape, and supported their contention with arguments from geography or tradition, or if they were asked to produce proofs or instances as to “the matter of fact” near those limits, they foresaw that objections would be raised which they were not sufficiently instructed to answer. No doubt, they continued, it might be advantageous to fix some limits in order to lessen the chance of disputes, but even if mathematical lines could be laid down and agreed upon, it would not remove all ground of quarrel. Besides, to fix definite bounds would place upon themselves a burden which properly lay upon their adversaries; for when the king’s right of the flag was established as incontrovertible within the British seas, if any one who was called upon to strike declared he was not in the British seas, he would have to prove it. This long disquisition failed to convince the king. He insisted that the previous article, in which the term “British seas” alone occurred, should be withdrawn and the new article with the specified limits substituted.[912]

The influence of certain important changes in political affairs which had taken place since the congress met now made itself strongly felt at the deliberations. The position and the prospects of the United Provinces had greatly improved. The States-General had succeeded in entering into alliances with the Emperor, the King of Spain, and the Dukes of Brandenburg and Lunenburg. In the field the movements of the Prince of Orange and his allies caused Louis to abandon his conquests with even greater rapidity than he had made them. The English Parliament, too, from which the Dutch had reason to hope for much, was about to assemble. It was thus natural that the Dutch ambassadors and the representatives of their allies at the congress should take a higher tone in dealing with the peace proposals. Some of the conditions which had been put forward by France and England were now declared to mean “utter ruin” to the Dutch, or their “eternal servitude”; and among them was the demand of Charles for a payment for liberty of fishing, which it was asserted would make them tributary to England. The English plenipotentiaries employed all the arguments they could discover in Selden’s _Mare Clausum_ and other similar works, and in the volume of State Papers with which they were provided, to convince the congress that fisheries might be “appropriated” on the high seas as well as in rivers and lakes, and that the King of England had the exclusive right to the fisheries off his own coasts. They cited the example of Genoa with the tunny fishery, the treaties between England and Denmark concerning the fisheries on the Norwegian coast and at Iceland, the licenses of the kings of Denmark, the English licenses to French fishermen and the grant to Bruges, the Act of Richard II., and the licenses forced by the Earl of Northumberland on the Hollander busses in 1636. They even displayed the original documents showing King James’s expostulations with the Dutch in 1618, and the charter granted to Bruges. It was all in vain. The times had changed. The Dutch ambassadors could now afford to pass the matter off with a raillery. They told Jenkins and Williamson that they “would bait the herrings, as men do carps, to come and feed upon their coasts, and then they would be in possession of a liberty to fish”; adding that they would then allow the English to fish upon the Dutch coast without fear of molestation. More seriously, they said that since no similar stipulation had been allowed in any previous treaty, the States-General trusted to the goodness of the king to pass over the article on that occasion; and Beverning, who was one of the Dutch representatives, recalled how he had discussed the whole matter with Cromwell in 1653, who had withdrawn the claim to the fishery.

No one, neither the mediators nor even the French, the allies of Charles, gave the English ambassadors any encouragement to insist on the fishery article; and finally De Groot informed them, in language more forcible than elegant, that his countrymen would rather “burst” than submit to any acknowledgment in that matter, and that he believed the States would sooner forbid their subjects to fish at all than to ask leave to do so of the crown of England.

The English ambassadors were forced to tell the king that they had no hope of obtaining consent to the article about the fishery, unless indeed the Parliament (which had by this time strongly and boldly shown its sympathy with Holland) “should happen to stand vigorously by his Majesty in this demand which he is pleased to make.” They suggested--almost, one may think, with a touch of irony--that the Dutch might be offered, as an alternative, “a Bill,” like the proclamation of James in 1609, or the Act of 2 Richard II. that laid an impost of sixpence a ton on our own fishing vessels, “wherein,” they added, “if strangers be not intended (as we humbly conceive they are), they may be more expressly taken in.”[913]

Although it was on the fishery article that the negotiations stuck most, difficulties also continued to arise about the one on the flag. The Dutch said they were willing to do anything that had been done in former times by way of respect to the crown of England; they could not do it as a right, nor could they do anything that might be construed to be an acknowledgment of the king’s claim to the dominion of the British seas. They were unable to admit, without proof, that it was the former practice for a whole fleet of theirs to strike to a single English ship; and while again affirming their willingness for this to be done in future, they declined to make any express recognition of it as a right in the treaty, saying that it would be “abundant courtesy” if they admitted the words _Maria Britannica_, as in all their other treaties; it was a term, moreover, which the French could not be brought to admit into their treaty of Breda, insisting on the term _maria proxima_ instead. The English representatives would not condescend to adduce proofs as to the past usage. The king, they said, would not allow an observance so ancient and notorious to be questioned as a matter of fact, any more than that England was an ancient monarchy; and they did not ask for a fuller stipulation than in the article proposed by Cromwell. On the other side, it was pointed out that Cromwell had given up all the points raised, especially the striking of a whole fleet; and, moreover, they could not allow that all the tract of sea between the North Cape and Cape Finisterre was the British Ocean, and they hinted they were willing to strike all the world over without any limitation of places. The English ambassadors wrote to Arlington that although they had not been instructed to claim as British the sea between the limits named, yet, if these limits were adhered to, the Dutch would not fail to alarm the Dane and the Swede, the French and the Spaniard. They were justly suspicious of the too generous offer of the Dutch to strike in all seas. They saw in it the design to make the special right possessed in the British seas, in virtue of the king’s sovereignty there, less certain and evident in future ages, and to transform it into a mere mark of civility. Charles gave way to a slight degree. In February 1674 he sent on another article, in which the northern limit was brought down from the North Cape to the middle point of the Land-van-Staten in Norway.[914]

By this time, however, negotiations for a separate peace between England and the United Provinces had been begun in London, and the sluggish congress at Cologne, slowly evolving a general peace, broke up and dispersed. Charles was driven to negotiate separately by the action of the Parliament, which financial necessities had forced him to summon in October, and which lost little time in showing its ill-humour with his policy. In his opening speech he stated that he had hoped to be able to announce the conclusion of an honourable peace, but the Dutch, he said, had treated his ambassadors at Cologne “with the contempt of conquerors,” and had other thoughts than peace; and he asked for supplies. Shaftesbury, as usual, filled in the picture. The king, he said, had expected to meet them with the olive-branch of peace, but the obstinacy of the Dutch had foiled the negotiations, although his Majesty’s concessions had been so great. “He could not,” he continued, “be King of Great Britain without securing the dominion and property of his own seas: the first, by an article clear, and not elusory, of the flag; the other, by an article that preserved the right of the fishing, but gave the Dutch permission, as tenants, under a small rent, to enjoy and continue that gainful trade upon his coasts.” But the Dutch, he said, would not agree to any article on the flag that was clear or plain, and they refused any article about the fishery except such a one as might convey to them the right of inheritance for an inconsiderable sum of money, “though it be a Royalty so inherent in the crown of England, that I may say (with his Majesty’s pardon for the expression) he cannot sell it.” “There is not,” continued the Chancellor, “so lawful or commendable a jealousy in the world, as an Englishman’s of the growing greatness of any Prince at sea. If you permit the sea, our British wife, to be ravished, an eternal mark of infamy will stick upon us.” It was therefore the duty of Parliament to provide the king with more money.[915]

Parliament was not to be cozened by fair words or beguiled by the oratorical tropes of Shaftesbury. The Commons boldly affirmed they would vote no more money unless it appeared that the Dutch were so obstinate as to refuse all reasonable conditions of peace; and with regard to other matters they showed a bellicose spirit. The king resolved to prorogue them suddenly, and went unexpectedly to the House of Peers and sent for the Commons. When Black Rod approached to summon them the door was hastily closed, the Speaker was hurried into the chair, and the following motions were instantly put: that the alliance with France was a grievance; that the evil counsellors about the king were a grievance; that the Duke of Lauderdale was a grievance and not fit to be trusted or employed. Before the motions could be passed, Black Rod, knocking loudly in the king’s name, was admitted, and the House rose in confusion. A scene so reminiscent of the days of his father could hardly be lost on Charles. It was clear that it would be impossible to continue the Dutch war if its continuance depended on Parliament voting money for it.

Shortly afterwards the king found it necessary to summon Parliament again, and, changing his attitude, he condescended to submit to them, for their opinion, certain propositions for peace which the States-General had communicated through the Spanish ambassador. At the same time he sent privately for John Evelyn, who had been for some time engaged on a history of the second Dutch war, and asked him to write something “against the Hollanders about the duty of the flag and fishery,” no doubt with the intention and object of influencing the opinion of Parliament.[916] Parliament acted with promptitude. They passed a resolution, on 27th January 1674, recommending the king to make a speedy peace. Louis, who saw how things were tending with the Parliament, having advised the same course, Sir William Temple was summoned from his orchards a few days later and requested to proceed to The Hague to conclude the treaty. On the eve of his departure, the Marquis de Frezno, the Spanish ambassador, announced that he had received full powers from the States to treat and conclude a peace. The negotiations were thereupon conducted in London between Sir William Temple and the Marquis, and they went on so smoothly and speedily that the treaty was signed at Westminster on 9th February. The two points that caused the greatest difficulty were the flag and the recalling of the English troops from the French service: the claim for tribute for liberty to fish was dropped altogether.[917]

The article relating to the flag differed from the corresponding articles in the previous treaties. It was as follows:--

“The said States-General of the United Provinces, duly acknowledging, on their part, the right of the above-mentioned most serene prince, the King of Great Britain, to have honour paid to his flag in the seas to be hereafter named, will and do declare and agree, that all and singular the ships and vessels belonging to the said United Provinces, whether ships of war or others, whether single ships or in squadrons, which shall meet with any ships or vessels whatsoever belonging to the most serene prince, the King of Great Britain, whether one or more, carrying his Britannic Majesty’s ensign, or flag called the _Jack_, in any of the seas from the Cape called _Finisterre_, to the middle point of the land called _van Staten_, in Norway, the foresaid ships or vessels of the United Provinces shall strike their flag and lower their topsail, in the same manner and with the like testimony of respect, as hath been customary in any time or place heretofore, by any ships of the States-General or their predecessors to any ships of his Britannic Majesty or his predecessors.”[918]

* * * * *

Most writers who have dealt with the subject have followed Temple in thinking that this article was a great triumph for English diplomacy. “The point of the flag,” said Temple, “was carried to all the height his Majesty could wish; and thereby a claim of the crown, the acknowledgment of its dominion in the narrow seas, allowed by treaty from the most powerful of our neighbours at sea, which had never yet been yielded to by the weakest of them, that I can remember, in the whole course of our pretence; and had served hitherto but for an occasion of quarrel, whenever we or they had a mind to it, upon other reasons or conjectures.”[919]

Temple’s eulogy of his own diplomacy was hardly justified. The Dutch had offered a similar article at Cologne; the striking of the flag had been provided for in previous treaties, and it was not in the least, as Temple should have known well (for De Witt often told him), and as the wording of the article shows, an acknowledgment of the dominion of England in the narrow seas. There is nothing in the article of the Westminster treaty that the Dutch were not perfectly willing to concede at Cologne. It was an improvement on the arrangement in previous treaties, inasmuch as the northern and southern limits of the seas in which the Dutch were to strike were defined, and it was made clear that the Dutch were to strike to a single English ship.

But in truth the real diplomatic victory lay with the Dutch. The striking of the flag is expressly described in the article as a ceremony of “honour” and a “testimony of respect,”-- a qualification and attenuation not to be found in the previous treaties. By the introduction of these words the Dutch gained a point they had long contended for. Equally pertinent was the omission of the term “British seas,” which is found in all the earlier treaties,--an omission for which Charles was in part responsible. The ceremony “of respect” was to be paid “in any of the seas” between Cape Finisterre and Van Staten; and while the Dutch refused to consider those seas British, the English plenipotentiaries at Cologne were unable to contend that they were British. The limits fixed were therefore, as Sir Philip Meadows observed, “too wide for dominion and too narrow for respect”;[920] for we never claimed dominion in the Sea of Norway or the Bay of Biscay, and the Dutch offered to strike to the king’s flag all over the world. There is little doubt that the part of the article in which Charles was most interested was that relating to the striking of a squadron to a single ship of his, as it furnished a sort of justification for the action of the _Merlin_ before the war. Temple himself was most anxious that the “former custom” referred to in all the previous treaties should be clearly defined; and Charles was entirely satisfied with the article.[921]

Notwithstanding Temple’s satisfaction as to the article on the flag, it did not end disputes on the subject. In the year in which the treaty was concluded, and in the year following, several episodes occurred. One of them concerned personages no less eminent than the English ambassadors who had been at Cologne, and it formed a practical commentary on the fruitless negotiations in which they had been engaged. Sir Leoline Jenkins and Sir Joseph Williamson did not return until after the conclusion of peace, and when the king’s yacht, the _Cleveland_, which had been sent to bring them over, was lying at anchor off the Briel, with Sir Leoline on board, a yacht of the States passed between it and the shore without striking its flag or firing any guns. When a message was sent from the _Cleveland_ to the commander of the yacht, who was ashore, telling him he should have struck his flag, he only shrugged his shoulders and said he had the States’ ambassadors bound for England aboard. The _Cleveland_ then weighed anchor and went about a league seawards, where the Dutch yacht and a man-of-war were lying. Again no flag was lowered to the king’s yacht, and the English captain asked Jenkins what he should do. Jenkins adduced the case of Tromp’s striking to the Earl of Arundel in Goeree Road, and also of Prince Maurice’s yacht, which a few days before had struck “to the kitchen-yacht in the canal of Delf-Haven, between the houses.” The captain then remembered that the Dutch had struck to him in that very place as he passed up to Rotterdam, and he proceeded to take vigorous measures to compel the “duty.” A shot was fired “under the forefoot” of the States’ man-of-war, and after a “convenient” interval another over his poop, and then a third between his masts. This brought a boat from the man-of-war to say that the States’ ambassadors were “much astonished” at the shots being fired, and that they would not strike, as they were within their own ports. But when Sir Leoline Jenkins sent a formal request to Van Beuningen, one of the Dutch ambassadors, the man-of-war took in its flag, and the incident ended.[922] In the following year Sir Leoline Jenkins was again a passenger on board one of the royal yachts, the _Charles_; on reaching the Maes a Holland man-of-war saluted with five guns, but kept its pennant flying, and only took it in and repeated the guns after two shots had been fired at it by the _Charles_; the men-of-war at the Briel also saluted with their pennants struck.[923]

In the spring of the same year Captain Herbert in the _Cambridge_ encountered six French ships off Dungeness which refused to strike, and returned the fire, their admiral saying it was the King of France’s ship, and did not strike. They outsailed the _Cambridge_, said Herbert, which was no match for them. A few weeks later a French privateer in the same locality refused to strike to the _Garland_; and the tables were turned on the English by a Dutch privateer, which fired on a Whitby merchant vessel for not striking quick enough, and fined the master six shillings and eightpence for each shot expended, as well as beating and abusing him.[924] A case of quite a different kind, unique indeed, as it appears, occurred at the end of 1675. On the return of the _Quaker_ ketch to England the officers charged the commander, Captain Joseph Harris, with having lowered his top-sails to a Spanish man-of-war, supposed to be an Ostend privateer, in the Bay of Biscay, to the great dishonour of the king. He was tried by a court-martial, found guilty, and condemned to be shot to death at such time and place as the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty should appoint.[925] He was, however, reprieved and then pardoned.[926]

Difficulties not infrequently occurred with merchant vessels, and even with fishing-boats, over this matter of the flag. We find Pepys writing to Captain Binning of the _Swan_, at Yarmouth, telling him that while he should take care that the Dutch “do their parts of civility towards his Majesty’s flag,” he ought not to impose upon them any “innovation,” the reference being to the taking of twelve barrels of herrings from each of the offenders in lieu of carrying them into port.[927] Foreign merchant vessels, especially Spanish and French, were sometimes brought into port and their masters tried before the High Court of Admiralty for refusing to strike to English men-of-war. By the strict law of the Admiralty such vessels might have been forfeited, but this extreme course was apparently rarely or never taken, the usual punishment inflicted being fine and imprisonment. Cases of this kind were naturally apt to raise unpleasant questions with foreign Powers, and they had to be dealt with cautiously. In 1675, when two Frenchmen were brought before the court for this offence, the judge, Sir Thomas Exton, appealed for advice to Sir Leoline Jenkins, then at the Congress of Nimeguen, and was warned by him to be very careful how he dealt with the case. He advised him to meddle as little as possible with the French edicts of 1555 and 1584 (see p. 117), under which the French Admiralty claimed similar rights, and to “stick to the terms of the indictment of the Spanish Captain at the Old Bailey,” adding that although much might be said plausibly on the subject of striking, that indictment had never been attacked; and he argued against the seizure and forfeiture of the ship.[928]

After the third Dutch war several works appeared in which the claims of England to the salute and to the sovereignty of the sea were maintained. It has been already mentioned that at the beginning of 1674, when the Dutch offers of peace were received in London, the king asked Evelyn to write something against the Dutch about the flag and fishery. As the occasion was pressing, Evelyn extracted the introductory part of his work on the second Dutch war (a work which was never completed), and after submitting it to the king, published it under a rather misleading title.[929] Notwithstanding the haste shown, the book appeared too late. Peace had been concluded, and the Dutch ambassador complained about it to the king. Charles ordered it to be recalled, but with characteristic artifice he instructed that the copies which were seized publicly to pacify the ambassador should be immediately restored to the printer, by which means the sales at least were much increased.[930] About the book itself little need be said. It is an ill-digested and unveracious account of England’s claim to the sovereignty of the sea and the fishery, founded on Selden, Boroughs, and less reputable writers. The author computed the arrears of “rent” due by the Dutch, and which he said they had engaged to pay for liberty of fishing, at over £500,000; and he falsified the amount of “license-money” received by Northumberland in 1636, although the Earl’s journals, and many other documents, were placed at his disposal. The most severe criticism of the work was made by the author himself, in a long and remarkable letter which he sent to Pepys a few years later, in which he repudiated, _seriatim_, all the “evidences” he had adduced in favour of the English pretension.[931]

Another book of more influence than Evelyn’s, because it was for a long time considered the standard work on the maritime law of England, and went through many editions, was published by Molloy two years later; and in it the English pretension received perhaps its most arrogant expression.[932] Notwithstanding the terms of the treaty of 1674, the author declared that the striking of the flag was not a mere ceremony of respect, but an absolute acknowledgment of England’s sovereignty of the seas, the king granting foreigners a general license to pass through his seas, “paying that obeisance and duty, like the services when Lords grant out estates, reserving a rose or peppercorn, the value of which is not regarded, but the remembrance and acknowledging their benefactor’s right and dominion.” Molloy held that by the treaty of 1674 the dominion of the British seas was “ascertained” to extend from Cape Finisterre to Van Staten, in Norway, and similar opinions on this and on the subject generally were expressed by other writers on naval matters, as by Godolphin[933] and Zouch,[934] and by most writers on Admiralty affairs during the remainder of the century and well into the next.

With respect to the fisheries, the failure of the previous attempt to establish a great fishery society did not deter others from being proposed. Efforts were indeed made throughout nearly the whole of the reign of Charles to keep the subject alive. An elaborate report was prepared by Dr Benjamin Worsley, who was Secretary to the Council for Trade and Plantations, on the Dutch fisheries and the best means by which a fishery could be established in this country with good hope of success. He stated that the least valuation generally placed on the Dutch herring fishery was £3,000,000, and that it was said to employ 1600 busses. Detailed reasons were given for the belief that success would not attend any attempt to establish a great fishery in England, unless it received the active support of the king and Parliament, and unless we were able to undersell the Dutch in the markets, which he thought by a change of methods we might be able to do.

Various efforts were made, openly and surreptitiously, to induce Dutchmen to settle at Yarmouth and Dover; the king even issued a declaration to encourage this in June 1672. But the schemes failed, and Sir Arnold Braems suggested that £3000 of the amount expected to be paid by the Dutch for the liberty of fishing should be devoted to bringing over busses and men.[935] Early in 1675 a detailed scheme was laid before Charles for the setting up of a fishery company with forty busses and a capital of £40,000, the estimated profit in the first year being placed at £31,463.[936] Among the objections urged to the setting up of the fishery by the king were the want of seamen and experienced curers; the acquaintance of the Dutch with the markets and their spare living, which would enable them to undersell us; and the laziness of English seamen. These objections were apparently answered satisfactorily,[937] and in 1677 Charles issued a commission to the Duke of York, the Earl of Danby, and others for a new society, to be called “The Company of the Royal Fishery of England,” granting a number of privileges and £20 per annum from the customs of the port of London for each buss or dogger. Stock was subscribed to the amount of about £12,500, which was spent in purchasing busses; but as they were Dutch-built and manned by Dutchmen, the French, then at war with the United Provinces, seized six of the seven belonging to the company and brought the work to a stop. Although the company was reconstructed later, and an attempt to raise £60,000 to carry it on made with some success, the death of the king and the troubles which followed caused the enterprise to be suspended. Thus the endeavours of Charles II. to create a great national fishery in England were no more successful than those of Charles I.