The Channel cruise of Northumberland’s fleet was thus as barren of result as had been Lindsey’s in the year before. He fell in with a few Dunkirk privateers, far too nimble to be caught up by the “great unwieldy” English ships. When in Portland Road, a glimpse was got of eight large ships at a great distance, which were thought to be States’ men-of-war. Northumberland stood towards them, but as soon as they perceived the movement they tacked about and were speedily out of sight. “They are so well built and fitted for sailing,” remarked the Earl, “that I can never come near when they have a mind to avoid, unless by chance.” It has indeed been well said that whether Charles was sovereign of the seas or not, he could not build ships that would sail.[528] For the same reason the English vessels were unable to find the “Turkish” pirates, which, when the Earl put into Plymouth, came out of the Irish seas, and carried off about thirty English fishermen into captivity. During Northumberland’s cruise, Captain Carteret with six ships was busily employed in convoying such trading vessels “as desired it” from the English coast to Dunkirk or Ostend, “taking an acknowledgment in money of strangers.”[529]
But if Northumberland was foiled by the Fabian tactics of Richelieu, as they had foiled Lindsey, with regard to the striking of the flag, he succeeded in forcing the Dutch fishermen to take the king’s license, a policy which Charles had contemplated long before even the first ship-money fleet was equipped. We have already seen how the Scottish burghs in the course of the negotiations about the Fishery Society, repeatedly insisted that the unwelcome Hollander should be driven from their seas (see pp. 227, 234). As early indeed as 1630 rumours were rife in Paris that a fleet of fifteen English ships, under the command of Sir Kenelm Digby, was to be equipped for this purpose;[530] and there were signs from other quarters of what was impending. In 1634 Sir Nicholas Halse addressed a treatise to the king on Dutch trade and fisheries, like those so profusely bestowed on James, in which he drew a lively picture of the ills which arose from their predominance. The yearly profit derived by the Hollanders from their fishing in the British seas he placed at £6,000,000 sterling, which enabled them to maintain their wars; and yet they were so ungrateful as to say that England would never be well governed until they had the governing of it. He recommended that the Hollanders should be licensed to enjoy half the fishings, a course which he said would make Charles the most powerful sovereign in Christendom,--superlatives and hyperbole never being stinted in such forecastings.[531] Then a very influential body, the Merchant Adventurers, exasperated by certain measures taken by Holland and the States-General with respect to their staple at Amsterdam, petitioned the Council to retaliate, and among their retributory suggestions was the prohibition of the Hollanders from fishing on the British coasts or drying their nets on the English shore.[532] It would appear indeed that originally one of the principal ostensible objects of the fleet of 1635 was to force licenses on the Dutch. Thus Nicholas, the Secretary to the Admiralty, who was not in the secret of the Spanish negotiations, in a memorandum drawn up in that year, suggested that the duties of the fleet should be the suppression of piracy about the mouth of the Straits, and the establishment of the king’s rights to the fishings in the eastern and northern seas.[533]