Note 351 — Chapter V · JAMES I.—continued. DISPUTES WITH THE DUTCH.

Among the Cæsar papers in the British Museum (Lansd. MSS., 142, fol. 383) there is one dated 23rd December 1618, containing extracts “noted out of a book called Mare Liberum sive de Jure quod Batavia, &c., Lugd. Bat., 1609,” together with notes from Welwood’s De Dominio Maris, answering the assertions in that book. It was doubtless a memorandum to be used in the conferences with the Dutch ambassadors; and on the back of it are scrawled jottings difficult to decipher, headed, “The Kinges Speeche touching the Dutchemen’s fishing upon the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland,” to the following effect: “1. The treaty never so opportune as now when they fearest it most and their State least settled; in ill terms with France and Spain. 2. In the East Indies we can match them, and so in the north voyage (Greenland ?). The French King taketh part with Barnevelt. The King of Spain prepareth against Venice. What the King of Denmark, the Princes of the Union, the ... and the rest of the Protestants think of any falling out with the Low Countries.” It may be noted that this memorandum contains no reference to Selden’s Mare Clausum, which the author stated was submitted to the king this year (see p. 366).