Читать книгу The Sovereignty of the Sea - Thomas Wemyss Fulton - Страница 21

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It was during the reign of Charles, into whose hands the sceptre passed in the spring of 1625, that the English pretensions to the sovereignty of the sea attained their most extravagant proportions,—a circumstance which was owing in great measure to the condition of domestic affairs and the king’s assumption of personal government. James had been content to limit his assertion of sovereignty to the question of the rights of fishing and the preservation of the “King’s Chambers” from the hostile acts of belligerents. But Charles, while vigorously pursuing this policy so long as he was able, combined with it the most extreme claims to dominion on the neighbouring seas that had ever been put forward by an English king. The sovereign rights of jurisdiction over the “Sea of England” which were supposed to have been exercised by the early Plantagenets, were now roused from the slumber of centuries and revived in their most aggressive form. The King of England was to be lord of the surrounding seas, and to rule over them as a part of his territory. A beneficent and universal peace was to reign over the waters of the German Ocean and the Channel, unbroken by the sound of an angry shot. No other fleets or men-of-war—be they Spanish, or Dutch, or French—were to be allowed “to keep any guard” there, to offer any violence, to take prize or booty, or to search the merchant vessels of other nations. The blockade of the opposite coasts of the Continent by an enemy’s fleet, as that of Flanders by the Dutch or French, was to be interdicted, because those coasts were washed by the British seas and blockading was a warlike operation. On the other hand the king was to protect the commerce and navigation of his friends and allies. Foreign merchantmen might go on their way in security, undisturbed by fears of pirates or enemies, for “all men trading or sailing within those his Majesty’s seas do justly take themselves to be in pace Domini Regis,”—under the peace of our Lord the King. And as an external symbol and acknowledgment of this absolute dominion, foreign vessels were “to perform their duty and homage” on meeting his Majesty’s ships by striking their flag and lowering their top-sails. If they refused to do so, they were to be attacked and taken or sunk; the vessel was liable to forfeiture as “good prize,” and the offenders carried into port to be tried for their high contempt. Moreover—and it looks but a small thing by comparison,—no foreigners were to be permitted to fish in British waters without first receiving the king’s license so to do, and paying to him a tax in acknowledgment of the permission. In this way Charles hoped to restore the sovereignty of the King of England in the British seas—that “fairest flower of the imperial crown,” as he described it—to “its ancient style and lustre.”

That a scheme so preposterous was seriously entertained and for a time attempted to be realised showed the inherent incapacity of the king for rational government. He was no more able to gauge his strength in relation to foreign Powers than he was to foresee that the contest he had entered into with his own subjects would end in rebellion and the scaffold. It was ridiculous to suppose that other nations would tamely surrender their sovereign rights in the seas off their own coasts and ports, abandon the protection of their commerce and shipping and their rights as belligerents, simply because the King of England wished to be lord of the sea. Had Charles been able to give effect to his selfish and ambitious scheme, he would soon have been confronted with an overwhelming coalition of maritime Powers, to whom the free use of the sea was as necessary as it was to England. As it happened, war was averted by the dexterity of Richelieu and the prudence and patience of the Dutch; and also, it must be added, by the vacillation of Charles himself, who was always trying to arrange some new combination with Continental Governments to carry out the only policy to which he was true—the recovery of the Palatinate for his nephew.

It may be supposed that the splendour of the rôle attributed to the early kings of England as lords of the sea, would by itself appeal to the narrow imagination of one so deeply imbued as Charles was with a belief in the divine prerogative of kings; and the dominion of the seas was claimed as peculiarly a prerogative of the crown. But there were other more practical and less exalted inducements. The assumption of the rôle of the Plantagenet kings was intimately related to the state of home affairs and the means taken for the equipment of a fleet. Parliament having refused supply and been dissolved, recourse was ultimately had to the famous ship-money writs, by which it was possible to obtain the necessary ships independently of Parliament, as had been done by the early kings. To declare that these measures were indispensable for the maintenance of the sovereignty of the sea in its ancient style and lustre was well adapted to lessen their unpopularity, if anything could. It was a declaration “exactly calculated for the meridian of England,”394 for the English people in all ages have been prone to maritime glory and willing and anxious to make sacrifices for the sake of the navy, upon which their national safety depends.

It was in connection with the policy of the ship-money writs that the old doctrine of the Plantagenets came again into being. In the writs themselves the very words were copied that Edward III. had used in 1336 in his mandate to the admirals; but some years before they were issued one may trace the growth of the idea. In the period from 1631 to 1633 there was much searching of records with the view of establishing the king’s rights in his seas. Negotiations had been proceeding with Scotland, described below, with reference to a great fishery scheme, and the Scots had been very troublesome and persistent about their “reserved waters,” which the scheme threatened, the “land-kenning,” and the encroachments of the Dutch. They only agreed to give up their exclusive claim to the “reserved waters” for the benefit of the fishery association, provided that Charles would free the Scottish seas of the Hollander busses. In the long series of papers respecting the fishery project, mostly prepared by the indefatigable Secretary Coke, the change referred to may be perceived. In those of 1629 and 1630 there is no suggestion of the sovereignty of the seas, but in 1631 instances become numerous. Coke claims the sea fishings as belonging to the crown; he begins to speak of the king’s “undoubted right of sovereignty in all the seas of his dominions,” and plainly says it will be necessary to exclude foreign fishermen from the British seas once the fishing society is a success. In the next year he goes further. He begins a long and formal document—also on fisheries—in the following words: “The greatnesse and glorie of this Kingdom of Great Britaine consisteth not so much in the extent of his Majesty’s territories by land, as in the souerantie and command of the seas. This command is in peace over trade and fishing: and for warre in the power of his Majesty’s Navie to incounter the sea-forces of anie foren prince.” And he goes on to say that while Spain alone used to oppose it, it was now opposed by France and the Low Countries.395 Still more to the point were the words of Charles himself. A few months after the fishery negotiations with Scotland were concluded, he wrote to the Clerk-Register in Edinburgh saying that, as the fishing business was now completed, he was desirous that it should be known abroad by his neighbours through some “public writing,” and asking him to search the records of the kingdom for authentic evidence to show his rights to the fishings, and to send such evidence to him.396

At this time also the English records were being subjected to search and scrutiny with the same object, but for other reasons. The “homage” of the flag was being hotly enforced in the Channel and disputed by France. Pennington, the Admiral of the Narrow Seas, reported cases in which the French demanded the salute from English merchant vessels, and rumours that it was the intention of the French admirals to wrest the regality of those seas from England on the ground that the Pope had given it to France.397 This news caused Viscount Dorchester—the Sir Dudley Carleton who had represented King James at The Hague, now a peer and Secretary of State—to write to Boswell, Clerk of the Privy Council (soon also to be ambassador at The Hague) for some information, however little, concerning the King’s admiralty in the narrow seas. Boswell sent a few brief notes of little relevancy about the jurisdiction of the admiral and the Cinque Ports; but he added the interesting information that he believed Sir John Boroughs, the Keeper of the Records in the Tower, was able to produce an “original” concerning the first institution of “La Rool d’Oleron” by Edward I., in which the sovereignty of the kings of England in those seas appeared. This, said Boswell, was therefore before the kings of France could pretend to any sovereignty there, having “neither right nor possession of any part, or part of Britany, Normandy, or Aquitaine.”398 This, then, was the famous roll of 26 Edward I. now brought to light, or at least into use in the sphere of practical affairs. The discovery of Boroughs led Nicholas, the Secretary of the Admiralty, to draw up a note about the roll, “by which,” he said, “it is apparent that in those tymes ye soueraignty of those (Narrow) Seas was acknowledged by those princes (of Denmark, Sweden, &c., as mentioned in the roll): and justly, though no man can be said to have ye property of the sea, because a man cannot say this water is myne which runs, yet it is manifest that ye Kings of England have and had ye soueraignty and jurisdiction of those seas; that is, power to give laws and redresse injuries done on the same.”399

The germ of the new pretension of Charles to play the part of Plantagenet on the adjoining seas appears to have been this disclosing by Boroughs of the ancient roll. All the later writers on the English side of the controversy about mare clausum and mare liberum, as Selden, Coke, Prynne, as well as Boroughs himself, laid great stress on it.

It was, however, as we have already hinted, in connection with the fisheries that Charles’s first actions were concerned. He earnestly believed in the common opinion of the age that sea fisheries formed a principal means of developing commerce and navigation and maintaining a powerful navy, and early in his reign, before the new idea of maritime sovereignty dawned upon his mind, he did what he could to promote and foster them. The old laws for the preservation of the spawn and brood of fish, which had fallen into disuse, were put into force; proclamations appeared prohibiting wasteful fishing; a vigorous effort was made to suppress the use of injurious appliances; the strict observance of Lent was repeatedly enjoined. But what proved most attractive was the notion which had haunted men’s minds since the time of the Great Queen, and had always eluded realisation. Charles became convinced that the formation of a grand national fishery association would wrest from the Dutch their predominance in the fisheries, drive their busses from our seas, and transfer to the English people the herring-fishing, with all the blessings which flowed from it—commerce, wealth, and maritime power. The last attempt which had been made in this direction, in 1623, had, as we saw, signally failed, the Lord Mayor and the opulent aldermen of London “absolutely refusing” to have anything to do with it. The scheme was now, however, to be launched by the king himself, who undertook to favour it with important privileges and immunities, and intended at a suitable time to aid it by prohibiting foreigners from fishing on the British coasts.

Shortly after Charles began to reign, the old proposals to tax the Dutch were renewed. In 1626 a petition was presented to the House of Commons praying that a duty of 10 per cent might be laid upon all Dutch or foreign ships fishing in the narrow seas; with what result the records are silent. Two years later the proposal got a step further, for in 1628 a Bill was drafted to empower the king to levy two shillings in the pound on all herrings or fish exported in foreign vessels, and the tenth of the fish taken by foreigners in the British seas, the revenue so obtained to be employed for the king’s use. The latter suggestion looks almost satirical in view of the failure of the many attempts of James to get revenue from that source, and in the midst, too, of the squabbles then occurring between Charles and the Parliament, which refused supplies and was abruptly prorogued; especially as the House “humbly beseeched” him, “in recompense of the great sums which your Commons have thus cheerfully granted,” “yearly to provide and maintain a strong fleet of able ships upon the Narrow Seas.”400

The original plan of the new fishery association was drawn up by Secretary Coke and was submitted to a meeting held at Suffolk House on 29th November 1629. The two main points for consideration were: how they should obtain command of the fishery and be able to supply both themselves and foreign people, and how to find a “vent” for the fish taken and encourage merchants to purchase and export them. With regard to the first point, Coke said that to command and govern the whole fishing so as to make it a foundation of wealth to the kingdom, “equal to the Indies,” as it was then to the Hollanders, would require not fewer than 1000 busses, the cost of which would exceed £800,000. This, he admitted, would be a work of time, and he proposed, for a beginning, that timber should be felled in England, Scotland, and Ireland so as to be seasoned for the construction of 200 busses in the following year—40 in Scotland, 40 in Ireland, and 120 in England. Meanwhile, for the year beginning in January 1630, he recommended that ten or twelve busses should be bought in Holland, six Dutchmen to serve in each for the year; and that the necessary salt and timber for casks for curing the herrings should be got at Dunkirk from the prizes taken from the Dutch. As the cost of ten new busses built in England, fully equipped, would amount to £8390, including the cost of maintenance for four months, the plan suggested would be the best, and it was proposed to raise the money required by the “contributions of such adventurers as may be persuaded upon hope of the gains and by privileges from his Majesty.” It was intended that the busses should fish along with the Dutch on the east coast, beginning like them at Bressay Sound, Shetland, on 23rd June, and the herrings were to be put ashore to be repacked, after the Dutch method, at Aberdeen, Tynemouth, and Yarmouth. Supplementary to the busses, it was proposed to have six “doggers” to fish for cod and ling at Orkney and Shetland in the spring.