Elizabeth complained strongly of these acts of injustice as being contrary to the Law of Nations.[207] A Danish ambassador who came to England at this time tried to justify the prohibitions by reference to the treaty of 1583, by which permission had been given to English vessels to navigate the northern seas to Russia, but which did not grant any authority for fishing; and he requested the Queen to publish an edict inhibiting her subjects from fishing at Iceland or Wardhouse without the license of the King of Denmark, declaring that many English vessels persisted in carrying on the fishery without any license, contrary to the treaties. Reliance was also placed on an old treaty made in 1468 between Edward IV. and Christian I., in which it was stipulated that English vessels should not go farther north on the coast of Norway than Hagaland.[208] In the following year ambassadors were dispatched from England to negotiate an arrangement concerning the tolls levied at the Sound and the freedom of the northern seas for English fishermen,[209] and in a paper of 1602 conveying instructions to the ambassadors at Bremen we find an admirable exposition of the principles of the freedom of the seas. After claiming that the treaties of 1490 and 1523 had given liberty of fishing to the English, the ambassadors were to declare that the Law of Nations allowed fishing in the sea everywhere, as well as the use of the ports and coasts of princes in amity for traffic and the avoiding of the dangers from tempests; so that if the English were debarred from the enjoyment of those common rights, it could only be in virtue of an agreement. But there was no such contract or agreement. On the contrary, by denying English subjects the right of fishing in the sea and despoiling them for so doing, the King of Denmark had injured them against the Law of Nations and the terms of the treaty. Moreover, with respect to the licenses the Queen declared that if her predecessors had “yielded” to take them, “it was more than by the Law of Nations was due”; they might have yielded for some special consideration; and in any case it could not be concluded that the right of fishing, “due by the Law of Nations,” failed because licenses were omitted. As to the claim to the sea between Iceland and Norway on the ground that the King of Denmark possessed both coasts--the argument used by Dee and Plowden for the dominion of the English crown in the Channel--Elizabeth was emphatic. If it was supposed thereby “that for the property of a whole sea it is sufficient to have the banks on both sides, as in rivers,” the ambassadors were to declare “that though property of sea, in some small distance from the coast, may yield some oversight and jurisdiction, yet use not princes to forbid passage or fishing, as is well seen in our Seas of England and Ireland, and in the Adriatic Sea of the Venetians, where we in ours and they in theirs, have property of