Note 39 — SECTION III. OF THE FISHERIES AND MANUFACTORY AT LOWESTOFT.

In the reign of James I. the Dutch paid an acknowledgement for leave of fishing on our coasts, which being withdrawn, his son, Charles I. in the year 1636, issued a proclamation, declaring that he should maintain such a fleet at sea as would protect his coasts from the insults of the Dutch. And soon after sent a fleet, under the command of the Earl of Northumberland, to disperse them, and obliged them to pay 30,000 florins for leave to continue their fishing that season. And thus it has frequently happened since; the Dutch, by infringing on our liberties, and having had complaints alledged against them, have paid considerable sums to appease our resentment; and sometimes, when they have proved unsuccessful in these methods, have been severely chastised: but all to no purpose; for to this day they continue practising the same depredations on our coasts and we every year experience the usual inconveniences which attend them. About the year 1636 great progress was made in this fishery by the Dutch; and the wealth procured it to the republic, caused, as I have just observed, much jealousy in the English nation. In 1601, eighty thousand tons of herrings were caught, which being worth eight hundred gilders per ton, brought to the republic sixty-four millions of gilders. It increased so much from that time that Sir Walter Raleigh assures us, that in 1610 the inhabitants of the united provinces employed in this fishery, upon the coasts of England, three thousand busses, manned with fifty thousand hands. Such a prodigious gain occasioned the English that year to renew their ancient pretensions to the property of the seas which surround their island, and to exact of the Dutch fishermen the tenth herring as a sort of duty. About the year 1600 the Dutch, the French, the citizens of Embden, Hamburgh, and Bremen, got out of our seas, upon a medium, to the value of between six and seven millions sterling annually. Another inconvenience which the British nation experienced from foreigners being permitted to usurp so large a share of the herring fishery, was the great increase of their seamen. This was very evident from the wars with the Dutch which happened in the reign of Charles II., when they were able to supply with able seamen a fleet of upwards of one hundred sail of line of battle ships. It may be worth observing, that the ground work of the regulations pursued by the Dutch in their herring fishery, is taken from the sagacious institutions laid down by Edward III., in the famous statute of herrings passed in that reign.