Читать книгу The Sovereignty of the Sea - Thomas Wemyss Fulton - Страница 14

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The policy of freedom of commercial intercourse, navigation, and fishery which was enunciated in the Intercursus Magnus and the treaties which preceded it, was faithfully observed throughout the sixteenth century. No attempt was made by any of the Tudor sovereigns to interfere with the liberty which foreigners enjoyed of fishing on the English coast; nor was any claim put forward by them to the dominion or lordship of the surrounding seas. On the contrary, throughout the greater part of the century, facilities were given for the peaceful exercise and encouragement of sea-fishing, even in time of war; while on several occasions the last and greatest of the monarchs of the Tudor line actively contested the old pretensions of Denmark to the sovereignty of the northern seas, and the more recent claims of Spain and Portugal to the exclusive right of navigating the great oceans. It was nevertheless during this century that changes occurred which made it easy for James early in the next to initiate a new policy of mare clausum, and to repudiate the provisions of the so-called Burgundy treaties. The most important of these changes was perhaps the decay which overtook the sea fisheries. Apart from their commercial and economic value, the fisheries were looked upon as indispensable for the maintenance of maritime power, and probably at no previous time had greater efforts been made to foster maritime power than under the Tudors. The hardy fishermen who navigated their barks to distant seas—to Iceland, to Wardhouse, round the North Cape, and now to Newfoundland—were trained in a school of seamanship which fitted them admirably to take their place for the naval defence of the country. Even the herring-smacks and the dogger-boats that fished in the North Sea and the Channel turned out mariners by no means to be despised,—men acquainted with the coasts and the tides, able to manage sails and educated to the sea. It was this aspect of the fisheries which was mostly regarded by the statesmen of those times, and for which the “political lent” and the protective legislation were designed.

The causes which led to the decay in the English fisheries were no doubt various, but perhaps the chief one, and the one on which most stress was laid in the latter part of the century, was the Reformation. The very large consumption of fish due to the observance of Lent and the numerous days of fasting, or fish-days, has been referred to (see p. 58). The suppression of the monasteries (1536-1539) and the dispersal of the inmates and dependants must alone have had considerable influence, but the relaxation of ecclesiastical rule among the laity which followed was much more detrimental to the fisheries. The decay of the sea-coast towns, so frequently spoken of in the reign of Elizabeth, was mainly attributed to this cause. Another influence which operated in the same direction, most markedly towards the end of the century, was the great growth of the fisheries and commerce of the Dutch. After the assertion of their independence of Spain (1581), commonly called the “abjuration of Philip,” their fisheries developed with great rapidity. One of the first acts of the new Republic (1582) was the codification of the fishery statutes; and about this time they applied to the deep-sea herring fishery the name of Great or Grand Fishery (Groote Visscherye), as being “the chief industry of the country and principal gold-mine to its inhabitants,” in contrast to the real gold-mines of Spain. They furnished the greater part of Europe with cured herrings and other fish, and the fish supply of England, and more particularly of London, fell to a large extent into their hands. Their herring fishery was carried on along our east coast, and the spectacle of great fleets of foreign fishing vessels frequenting our waters, while the native fisheries were falling to decay, roused envious and jealous feelings in the breasts of patriotic Englishmen.156

Under the Tudors the efforts made to foster the sea fisheries did not, as has been said, take the form of interfering with the foreign fishermen. They were rather directed, on the one hand, to increase the consumption of fish by restoring the strict observance of Lent and fish-days, and, on the other hand, to check the importation of fish caught by foreigners. In this way it was hoped that the native fisheries would be stimulated to supply at least the home markets. As early as 1541—a year or two after the suppression of the monasteries—an Act was passed which apparently indicates that the decline in the fisheries had already set in, and that it was customary for the English people to purchase fish from foreigners rather than catch them for themselves. Heavy penalties were imposed on any person who should bring into the realm for sale fresh fish (except sturgeon, porpoise, and seal, which were then included in the term) which they had purchased from strangers in Flanders, Zealand, Picardy, France, or elsewhere beyond the sea, “or upon the sea between shore and shore”; but the buying of fish at Iceland, Scotland, Orkney, Shetland, Ireland, or Newfoundland—to all which places English vessels went—was not prohibited.157 This statute was re-enacted four years later, and again by Edward VI. and Queen Mary.158 In the reign of Elizabeth a number of similar statutes were made, with the object of favouring the native fishermen in their competition with foreigners.

About the same time as the first Act of Henry was passed we begin to get evidence of laxity in the observance of Lent and of measures taken to deal with it. Many persons, including noblemen, were brought before the Privy Council charged with having eaten flesh in Lent, and were committed to the Fleet. The mayor and aldermen of London were commanded to make inquisition throughout all the wards of the city as to the households in which flesh was used in Lent, and the butchers were required to furnish information as to the quantity of flesh sold by them, and to whom, in the same period.159 This activity of the Privy Council foreshadowed the new policy of the “political lent” which was inaugurated a few years later in the reign of Edward VI., and with which the name of Cecil was associated. By this time it was clearly recognised that the religious changes that had taken place were prejudicial to the fisheries by lessening the consumption of fish, and in 1548 an “Act for Abstinence from Flesh” was passed, by which fines were imposed on those who did not observe the usual fast-days. The object of the measure was clearly explained. “One day or one kind of meat of itself,” it said, “is not more holy, more pure, or more clean than another, for that all days and all meats be of their nature of one equal purity, cleanness, and holiness;” but “considering that due and godly abstinence is a mean to virtue, and to subdue men’s bodies to their soul and spirit, and considering also especially that Fishers, and men using the trade of living by fishing in the sea, may thereby the rather be set on work,” it was enacted that no person should eat flesh meat on Fridays, Saturdays, Ember-days, Lent, or on any other day which was accustomed a fish-day, under a penalty of ten shillings fine and ten days’ imprisonment without flesh food.160

By this statute the political lent was established, and the policy of compelling the people to eat fish for the good of the fisheries and the navy was continued with more or less vigour for a century and a half. Sir William Cecil was especially active in its favour. He caused careful inquiries to be made into the condition of the decayed havens and sea-coast towns and the state of the fisheries. He was informed by the London fishmongers, to whom he had submitted a series of questions, that there was not so much fish then consumed “by a great quantity” as used to be the case, and that the number of vessels engaged in the fisheries had greatly decreased. On the latter point they referred to a return made about the twentieth year of the reign of Henry VIII., which showed that seven-score and odd ships then went to the Iceland fishery, about 80 crayers to Shetland, and about 220 crayers from Scarborough and other towns to the North Seas fishing, making a total of about 440 fishing vessels; while at the time they wrote—in the reign of Edward VI., and probably in 1552 or 1553—the number had fallen to about 133, of which 43 went to Iceland, 10 crayers to Shetland, and 80 to “the North Seas,” showing a decrease in the twenty-four or twenty-five years of about 307 “ships and crayers.”161 A similar story of the decay of the fisheries came from the east-coast towns. At Lynn, which was maintained chiefly by the Iceland and the herring fisheries, and which twenty or thirty years before sent out about thirty vessels to those fisheries, there were then only two Iceland barks, and no herring-smacks at all. It used to be able to furnish 300 mariners for the king’s service, while now it could not supply more than twenty or thirty. And so at Burnham (where the fishing-boats had decreased from 26 to nil), Wells, Clee, Cromer, Yarmouth, and other Norfolk ports—all had greatly decayed. The fisheries and the shipping had fallen off, the “men of substance” had lost their money or left, the population had diminished, and even the houses were falling down. To a statesman like Cecil, who knew the value of the mariners bred at the fishing ports for manning the navy if need arose, and how a flourishing fishery multiplied shipping, such information must have been disquieting. He calculated that while within twenty years back there had been 150 ships for Iceland, 220 for the north seas, and 78 for “Shotland” (Shetland), the numbers had fallen when he wrote to 43 for Iceland, 75 for the north seas, and 9 for Shetland; and that the number of fishing vessels had decreased from 448 to 127.162

In replying to Cecil’s second question as to the cause of the decay in the fisheries, the fishmongers said it was first of all due to the diminished consumption of fish, since the fish-days were not “duly observed as heretofore,” which “took away such hope of gain as in time past they have had” in carrying on the fisheries. A second reason they gave was the greater love “for ease and pleasure” than in former times, people now preferring to buy their fish from strangers rather than to “travail and venture for it themselves,”—a very common charge against Englishmen then and for a long time afterwards. As a third reason, they said the price of fish was regulated in various towns by the mayors and other officers in such a way that they were often forced to sell without sufficient profit, while Government purveyors made them part with their fish at nominal prices. It is to be noted that they made no complaint against foreign fishermen or the importation of foreign fish.

During the brief reign of Mary (1553-1558) Cecil was in the shade, but shortly after the accession of Elizabeth he again devoted attention to the decay of the fisheries and tried to apply fitting remedies. Among the State Papers of the year 1563 is a long and elaborate document, copiously revised by Cecil himself, which deals with the condition of shipping and fisheries, and obviously formed the basis and argument for the great Act made in the same year.163 In this paper the decay of the navy both in ships and mariners was traced by Cecil to a variety of causes: the piracies of Turks and Moors on the Levant trade, the transference of the spice trade from the Venetians to the Portuguese and Spaniards, the Spanish law of bottomry, the augmentation by the King of Denmark of the tolls at the Sound and his recovery of Iceland, and the decay of the English fisheries. Herrings and other sea fish, he said, were now taken upon our coast by strangers, who brought them into the realm and sold them “to the very inhabitants of the parts that were used to be fishermen,” while Englishmen had themselves been prohibited from exporting fish.164 The remedies which Cecil proposed were that the importation of wines and woad should be allowed only in English ships; that Englishmen should be prohibited from purchasing fresh herrings which had been caught by strangers; that they should be free to export and sell sea fish out of the realm; and, principally, that Wednesday should be made an additional fish-day. The decay of the fisheries, he said, was manifest on all the sea coast in the decay of the port towns, which soon would be “remedeless,” and it was caused by diminished consumption of fish at home and the want of foreign markets.165 On the other hand, Scotland, Norway, Denmark, Friesland, Zealand, Holland, and Flanders caught not only sufficient fish for themselves, but exported it to other countries, including England; while Spain provided herself by her fisheries on the south coast of Ireland, and France “aboundeth with fishermen” from her great fisheries at Newfoundland and Iceland.166 Cecil’s conclusion was that there was no likelihood for a long time of developing a flourishing export trade in fish, and that it would be necessary to institute another fish-day to increase the demand at home. On this part of his proposals he entered into a long argument, showing that in 1536 the 500 monasteries which paid tithes to the king, with a minimum number of 25,000 inmates, must have required a great supply of fish, as fish was then eaten on at least seventy-six days a year more than at the time when he wrote.167

By the great Act passed in 1563, “Touching certain Politic Constitutions made for the Maintenance of the Navy,” Wednesday was added to the two fish-days previously enjoined by the statute of Edward VI., but only after long debate and opposition on the part of the “puritans.”168 The Act also contained provisions to restrain foreign importation of fish, to encourage the export of English-caught fish by subjects, and to remove the complaints as to the action of purveyors and burdensome impositions—points on which the fishmongers had laid some stress. Herrings and other sea fish taken by Englishmen in English ships were to be freely exported without paying custom; no tax, toll, or restraint was to be imposed on fish taken and landed by subjects; it was made illegal to buy from strangers any herrings unless they were “sufficiently salted, packed, and casked”; only English vessels were to be allowed to carry coastwise any fish, victuals, or other goods; the cultivation of flax for fishing-nets was to be encouraged; and on the plea that there was “much deceitful packing” of cod and ling brought into the realm by aliens, the importation of these fish was forbidden, except only “loose, in bulk and by tale.” Most of these provisions and prohibitions would operate against the Dutch, who had not only a large part of the trade in herrings with England, but practically the monopoly in supplying barrelled cod and ling.169

From this time forward the policy of protecting the native fisheries by checking the competition of foreigners went hand in hand with the encouragement of the consumption of fish by the compulsory observance of fish-days. Interfering as it did with established practice and conflicting trade interests, the Act aroused opposition in various quarters, especially on the part of those who were interested in the important commerce in cured cod-fish. In the year after it passed, the Queen’s purveyors were unable to obtain in England sufficient supplies of fish for the navy and the royal service, and they were licensed to import cod-fish, lings, and green-cod, in barrels or casks, notwithstanding the prohibition in the Act,170—a privilege which had to be extended to all English subjects a few years later with respect to fish caught in their own vessels “with cross-sails.”171 On the other hand, it was claimed that the Act had done good. The coast people of Norfolk and Suffolk informed the Council in 1568 that it had increased the trade in fish in these counties; and as the Act had been passed for four years only and continued at the Queen’s pleasure, they petitioned that it should be renewed, and that provision should be made to put a stop to the importation by strangers of cod and ling in bulk, which were dried and sold under the name of Iceland fish, to the detriment of those engaged in the Iceland fishery, and also to ensure that fish-days should be better observed.172 In the same year the Council instructed the magistrates of London, Hull, and Southampton, and the justices of various shires, to commit to jail any persons fraudulently dealing with foreign imported cod and ling as Iceland fish;173 and three years later another Act was passed, giving effect to the wishes of the fishermen, and continuing the former Act for other six years.174 It contained a new provision showing that complaints had been made about the vessels, some of them foreign, which came “pretending” to buy fresh herrings on the coast of Norfolk. To avoid “lewd outrages” by these “catches, mongers, and Picardes,” in cutting and damaging the drift-nets of the fishermen, they were prohibited from anchoring between sunset and sunrise during the fishing season in the places where the boats were accustomed to fish.

Up to about this time no complaint seems to have been made against the foreign fishermen either by English fishermen or by statesmen or writers. The men from the Low Countries appear to have pursued their occupation in peace side by side with the Englishmen. But in 1570 the first note was heard of what became later almost a continuous lamentation. A petition was presented to the Privy Council asking that “letters” should be sent to Zealand and Holland, or ships of war despatched to protect the English fishermen from the evil doings of the Low Countrymen. “Otherwise,” the petitioners said, “both wee and all others that entend fysshing in all partes of this realme shall be utterly undone, for that the fishermen Flemynges this yeire have so spoyled and mysused all the coaste men, that it hath so discomforted them” that they feared “the whole avoyadaunce of fysshing both for herring and other fysshing upon all the north coast of this realme.”175 Whether or not this complaint referred to the outrages described in the Act quoted above is uncertain, but probably it did not, as the Hollanders and Zealanders fished for themselves, and they were now becoming rather numerous. It does not appear that any special action was taken regarding the petition. It was Cecil’s aim to increase the use of fish within the realm and to foster the native fisheries, but he had no desire to interfere with the liberty of fishing enjoyed by the Hollanders. Such action would have been contrary not only to the treaties but to the international policy of England at that time. On political and religious grounds the aid of the Dutch was needful in the struggle against the common enemy, Spain.

That the English people had become interested in the condition of the fisheries and somewhat jealous of the fleets of foreign vessels which fished along their coast may be inferred from the appearance at this time of two works—one by Captain Robert Hitchcock, and the other by the learned and unfortunate Dr John Dee. It is a curious circumstance that those authors, who wrote at the same period, should each have advocated one of the two lines of policy adopted in the next century. Hitchcock was all for freedom of fishing, for strangers and natives alike. His remedy was the creation of a great English fishery organisation to oust the Dutch from our seas. Dee, on the other hand, was emphatic in claiming mare clausum and an exclusive fishing for Englishmen, and in urging heavy taxation of foreigners who fished in the British seas.

Hitchcock was a gentleman and a soldier who, in 1553, as he himself tells us, while serving the Emperor Charles V. in his wars in the Low Countries, had observed with astonishment that the wealth and shipping of Zealand and Holland were due to their sea fisheries. Pondering on his discovery, he thought out a plan some years later by which a great national fishery might be established in England to supplant the Dutch, so that the wealth acquired by them in the British seas might go to profit his own countrymen. It was the first of the innumerable schemes of the kind which are to be found scattered over the economic literature of the next two centuries. Having reduced his plan to writing, he submitted it about the year 1573 to the Earl of Leicester, in 1575 to Queen Elizabeth, and in the following year he distributed copies to men of influence, in the hope “that God would stir up some good man to set out this work.” It appears even to have been brought to the notice of Parliament by Sir Leonard Digges, but its consideration was deferred “for want of time.”176 The copy presented to the Queen is preserved among the Burghley Papers in the British Museum,177 and the completed work, somewhat enlarged,—now very rare,—was published (in black-letter) on 1st January 1580 as “A New Year’s Gift to England.”178

The plan of Hitchcock was to borrow £80,000 for three years, when the whole amount would be repaid from the proceeds of the fish sold. The shires were to be arranged in eight groups, each group providing with its £10,000 fifty fishing vessels of not less than 70 tons burthen, or 400 altogether. These were to be built after the manner of “Flemysche Busses” and distributed at eighty ports around the coast; and at eight of the chief ports (London, Yarmouth, Hull, Newcastle, Chester, Bristol, Exeter, and Southampton) two “honest and substantial men of credit” were to be appointed chief officers, to act as treasurers, purveyors, and directors. Hitchcock estimated that each ship when ready for fishing would cost £200; the crews were to consist of a skilled master, twelve mariners or fishermen, and twelve “strong lustie beggers or poore men taken upp through the land.”179 The scheme proposed that the busses should first fish for herrings on the coast of England and Ireland during the fourteen or fifteen weeks this fishing lasted, the herrings being cured and branded after the “Flemish” fashion. The busses were also to visit Newfoundland for cod and ling; or some were to go to Iceland, “Wardhouse,”180 the north seas of England and Scotland, or to Ireland. It was intended to employ some of them in winter in exporting the surplus of cured fish to France, “or elsewhere.” As for the all-important question of earnings, it was calculated that each buss would catch at least 50 lasts, or 600 barrels, of herrings, worth £10 a last; altogether £200,000 from this item,181 and if two voyages were made, the amount would be doubled. It was supposed that each buss would bring back from Newfoundland 20,000 of the best “wet” fish and 10,000 dried—together worth £500; the same value was placed upon the 15,000 cod and 10,000 ling to be procured at Iceland, Wardhouse, or the north seas; and besides the fish, each ship was estimated to return with £50-£60 worth of cod-liver oil. Then with regard to the “vent” or sale of the fish, it was assumed that about half of the herrings, or 120,000 barrels, would be required for home consumption—not an exaggerated idea, for from other accounts it appears that London and the parts around it consumed about this time 60,000 barrels. Markets for the surplus herrings, it was believed, would be found at Normandy, Nantes, Bordeaux, and Rochelle. The profits were to be divided into shares, and besides paying off the borrowed capital and the interest (at 10 per cent), a stock of £8000 was to be formed at the eight chief ports, and £400 at the “225 decayed towns” in England and Wales for the philanthropic purpose of giving work to the poor. Nay, there was more. At the chief ports the surplus earnings were to provide a salary for “an honest, virtuous and learned man,” who was to travel constantly about the coasts preaching to the people, “as the Apostles did.” Among the indirect benefits to the nation Hitchcock included the transformation of idle vagabonds, of whom there were plenty, “daily increasing,” into good subjects—some of the Members of Parliament thought this part of the scheme alone entitled it to national support,—the addition of 9000 mariners for manning the navy, the saving of coin spent on foreign fish, the increase of the Queen’s customs, of commerce and navigation, and the repair of the decayed towns.

Such was the dream of this enthusiastic but thoroughly sincere old soldier: to expel the Hollanders from our seas by means of a national fishery organisation and to win back for England the wealth they gathered from her waters. At the time when he wrote, foreign fishermen were not nearly so numerous on our coasts as they became later. The herring-busses from the Low Countries which fished on the east coast numbered, he says, between 400 and 500, and the Englishmen “for feare of them,” and of tempests, fished in small vessels near the shore, as he shows in a “similitude,” here reproduced (fig. 2). Besides these, between 300 and 400 ships and barks from Biscay, Galicia, and Portugal fished off the south-west coast of Ireland from April to July, “near to Mackertymors country”; and also on the west and north-west coasts of Ireland for cod and ling from about Christmas to March. Hitchcock makes no complaint against the foreign fishermen for fishing in “her Majesty’s seas.” With a fine catholic generosity he indeed expressly says that all men of what country soever should be free to do so; that there was enough fish in the northern seas for all, even if there were 1000 sail more than there was. He believed that the English, by being so much nearer the fishing grounds, ought to be able to undersell the foreigner and get the markets and the trade.182