Note 247 — Chapter IV · UNDER THE STUARTS. JAMES I. A NEW POLICY.

State Papers, Dom., xxxii. 31. Other accounts are as follows. In 1609 the Earl of Salisbury wrote (erroneously) that while fifty or sixty years before only one or two hundred foreign vessels came to fish on the east coast, they then numbered two or three thousand sail (Winwood, Memorials, iii. 50). Sir William Monson in the same year placed the number of Hollander busses at 3000 and the number of men at over 30,000 (State Papers, Dom., xlvii. 112, 114). Sir Nicholas Hales also estimated the number of men at 30,000 (Ibid., xlv. 23; cclxxiv. 67). In the following year the Dutch ambassadors admitted that 20,000 men were employed in the great herring fishery, as well as other 40,000 in connection with it on shore (Ibid., lxvii. 111). A little later, in 1616, the Secretary to the Duke of Lennox told the Dutch ambassador that in the previous June, 1500 or 1600 Hollander busses were at Shetland (Add. MSS. Brit. Mus., 17,677, J, fol. 160). In 1618 the number fishing on the east coast of Scotland sometimes exceeded 2000 sail (MSS. Advoc. Lib., 31. 2. 16). Malynes in 1622 placed the number of busses from Holland and Zealand at 2000 (Consuetudo vel Lex Mercatoria, 89). Two years later a Spanish agent described them as consisting of 2400 vessels, guarded by 40 men-of-war, and scattered over an area of 200 leagues (State Papers, Dom., dxxi. 30). In 1629 Secretary Coke, who derived the information from a Scottish source, said the Hollander busses sometimes amounted to 3000 sail; three years later he put the number in connection with the fishery off Yarmouth at “above a thousand”; at this time the French vessels numbered 40 (Ibid., Chas. I., clii. 63; ccxxix. 79). Beaujon (op. cit., p. 64) expresses the opinion that 2000 busses were the maximum number.