At a cabinet meeting held in the night of April 30 the following recommendations to the King were agreed upon, and submitted by Grenville to George III the next day:
Upon consideration of the information which has been received from Mr. Meares of the detention and capture of several British vessels at Nootka Sound, on the coast of America, and of the circumstances of that transaction, as also of the papers which here have been delivered by Monsieur del Campo relative thereto, Your Majesty’s servants have agreed humbly to submit to Your Majesty their opinion that Your Majesty’s minister at the Court of Madrid should be instructed to present a memorial demanding an immediate and adequate satisfaction for the outrages committed by Monsieur de Martinez; and that it would be proper, in order to support that demand and to be prepared for such events as may arise, that Your Majesty should give orders for fitting out a squadron of ships of the line.[242]
In a note of May 1 the King asked whether a press would be necessary for equipping the proposed squadron. The next day Grenville replied that the Cabinet thought a press necessary and that it should take place Tuesday night, May 4, between 12 and 3 o’clock, as that time would create least observation. The same day that Grenville’s note was written the King answered it requesting a privy council for the next day, May 3, to consider the arrangements for the press. The council was to be composed of the cabinet ministers, as the more secret the business could be kept the more possibility there would be of collecting some seamen in the first attempt.[243]
After these days of martial activity in the British Cabinet Leeds replied to Campo’s letter of April 20. He informed the Marquis, May 5, that the unsatisfactory answer which the latter had been instructed to make to the English demand for satisfaction made it necessary for His Majesty to direct his minister at Madrid to renew the representations. Owing to this change in the seat of negotiations, Leeds said it was impossible for him to enter into the particulars of Campo’s letter. He concluded:
I can therefore at present only observe in general to your excellency that although on cases properly stated it will be His Majesty’s desire--which he has manifested in repeated instances--to take any measures necessary for preventing his subjects’ interfering with the just and acknowledged rights of Spain, he can never in any shape accede to those claims of exclusive sovereignty, commerce, and navigation to which your excellency’s representations appear principally to refer; and particularly that His Majesty will consider it his indispensable duty to protect his subjects in the enjoyment of the right of carrying on their fisheries in the Pacific Ocean.[244]