Ill-fortune was encountered in other directions. Both the islanders and the Scots from the east coast treated the English adventurers badly. The Bishop of the Isles and the heritors insisted on their tithes and dues in spite of the king’s charter. The busses were attacked by bands of Highlanders, armed with “swords and bows and arrows and other warlike weapons,” who took various articles from them in lieu of dues. The Lowlanders, under the leadership of “one Thomas Lindsay, a fisherman of Crail,” who pretended to be the deputy to the deputy of the Vice-Admiral of Scotland, were still less considerate. Lindsay “villified” their certificates, declared that King Charles had nothing to do with the Lewes, and vowed that “he would be the death of every Englishman on the island.” He forcibly seized one of the vessels laden with herrings which had gone ashore, on the ground that it was wreck, and wreck belonged to the Admiral of Scotland, and committed other hostile actions. The grievances of the Society became so acute, and redress from the Privy Council and the Admiralty Court so tardy and imperfect, that Charles in May 1635 appointed a commission, consisting of Archbishop Laud, the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Thomas Edmonds, and Secretaries Coke and Windebank, as judges, according to the charter, to deal with cases as they thought fit.
Disasters at sea were even more injurious to the Society than the troubles ashore. Again and again the busses were taken by Dunkirk privateers, who threw the crews into prison and held them for ransom. When those freebooters came across a Dutch-built buss, with a Dutch crew on board, they did not quite see why they should relinquish it because they were told it belonged to an English society; and the letters of “denization” which were provided by the king did not avail them much.[441] Notwithstanding strong protests, prolonged negotiations with the Cardinal Infanta, and reprisals made by English men-of-war on Dunkirk shipping, the Society suffered great loss in this way.
The misfortunes of the Society caused many of those who had promised subscriptions to withhold them. Then followed drastic measures: summonses before the Star Chamber, warrants for apprehension, threats of imprisonment, and most of the subscriptions were squeezed from the unwilling adventurers. On the other hand, creditors sued the Society for goods supplied and money lent; seamen sued it for wages; even the clerks had to petition the king for theirs, appropriately suggesting that they might be paid from the license-money that Northumberland’s fleet had extorted from the Dutch herring-busses.[442] As Charles’s domestic troubles thickened and his power on the sea began to wane, Pembroke and his associates became more and more importunate for help. Petitions were conveyed to him, and then “remonstrances.” He was pointedly reminded that he was the originator and “Protector” of the Society; unless he “really” helped them the work must stop. But Charles was then unable either to compel the restitution of the captured busses or to induce his subjects to subscribe to the Society’s funds. He did what he could. Pennington and the Warden of the Cinque Ports were ordered to seize Dunkirk ships to be sold for the benefit of the Society; he granted them a standing lottery, and issued a proclamation enjoining the strict observance of Lent, which might possibly help them by increasing the consumption of fish, and could at least do them no harm. Almost his last act in connection with the fishery association was to issue an Order in Council in which, somewhat irritably, he blamed the Dutch for the failure, and remitted to an influential committee to consider some means by which the fishery in the north seas might be “advanced and settled,” and particularly whether the Dutch should not be deprived of English lampreys for bait, which were necessary for their cod-fishing.[443] It was a great fall for Charles as Lord of the Seas, with a policy as sketched at the beginning of this chapter, to use the lampreys of the Thames as a weapon against the Dutch rather than a powerful armada. But by this time his power at sea had vanished. The Dutch lorded it in the Channel.