Scarcely anything more was heard about the herring fishery or the taxation of Dutch fishermen during the brief remainder of James’s reign. Another embassy came from the Netherlands in 1624, but it was to conclude a defensive alliance against Spain, and in the shadow of this new alliance the Dutch fishermen quietly reaped the harvest of the sea without fear of English interference. James’s policy of the assize-herring had thus completely failed. All his efforts to induce or to force the Netherlands’ fishermen to acknowledge his right were baffled by the superior diplomacy of the States,--their “artificial delays, pretences, shifts, dilatory addresses, and evasive answers.” The only immediately practical result of the king’s policy was that the herring-busses kept for a time farther from the coast of Scotland. But a new weapon had been forged for the contest with the United Provinces for supremacy at sea, and one which was to be used by his successors with much more skill, if with little greater ultimate success.
Of one symbol of this sovereignty of the sea comparatively little was heard during James’s reign--namely, the salute or homage to his flag. This traditional custom of the narrow seas, while maintained on important occasions, was not enforced with the vigour and arrogance which characterised it later, perhaps less rigorously than under the Great Queen. “I myself remember,” said Raleigh a few years before his execution, “when one ship of her Majesty’s would have made forty Hollanders strike sail and come to anchor. They did not then dispute _de mari libero_, but readily acknowledged the English to be _domini mavis Britannici_.”[387] Sir William Monson, too, who was Admiral of the Narrow Seas in the earlier part of James’s reign, tells us that the Hollanders were very “stubborn” about striking their top-sails and performing the duty due to the king’s prerogative, and that he earned their lasting ill-will by compelling them to do it.[388]
But the English commanders were punctilious in enforcing the salute in the narrow seas on state occasions. A notable instance occurred in 1603, when King Henry IV. of France sent over the famous Sieur de Rosny, afterwards Duke of Sully, to congratulate James on his accession to the throne of England. With a numerous retinue he went on board an English man-of-war at Calais, which then made sail for Dover accompanied by a French warship under the command of M. de Vic, the Vice-Admiral of France. The English captain observed with displeasure that the French vessel bore the arms of France at his top, “contrary to the custom of the narrow seas”; but on account of the important personage on board and the nature of his mission, he restrained himself from challenging the “indignity” until they approached Dover Road. Unable to brook the affront any longer, he fired at the French ship, and so “constrained her to strike her flag.” The shot did no harm, but M. de Vic at once turned round his vessel and went back to France in high dudgeon. Cecil thought it necessary to send a despatch to the English ambassador at Paris explaining the circumstances, and while saying that the English captain “rashly discharged” his gun, he thought that if the matter was “well looked into, and the former customs observed, there would be reason found for us to stand upon.”[389]