A more serious difficulty was the principle that lay at the root of the scheme--the taxation of the Dutch fishermen for the benefit of the Society. It was evidently admitted that the project would fail, even if the busses were manned by Dutchmen and the herrings cured and exported by them, unless some form of subsidy was provided. But on the threshold lay the question of the king’s right to impose a tribute on foreign fishermen. Rainsford endeavoured to help the solution by submitting a memorandum, “Touching his Majesty’s Tythe.”[269] It has some interest from the circumstance that it was the first attempt made in the reign of James to furnish historical and legal precedents for interfering with the liberty of fishing. In substance it is little more than a collection of the stories current at the time concerning the sovereignty of the sea, such as those about King Edgar, Queen Mary and Philip, and Camden’s statement about Scarborough.[270] It was also said that fishermen were compelled to pay taxes for liberty to fish in Russia, at the “Shoffland” islands and other islands belonging to the King of Sweden, in Denmark, and in Spain, where the Duke of Medina Sidonia derived a large revenue from the taxes on the tunny fishery. Rainsford reiterated the advantages of the scheme to the nation and the navy, and promised an annual revenue of £20,000 to the king, after the lapse of seven years, so long as he granted to the patentees the tribute on foreign fishermen. About this time, whether by arrangement with the London merchants or independently, some influential persons addressed the king in denunciation of the Dutch. Sir Nicholas Hales in 1608, and again in 1609, strongly advised the king to take action against them. Their fisheries in his Majesty’s seas, he said, were worth more than the mines of gold and silver in the Indies; in one year they had sold fish in England alone to the value of £1,200,000; by their means they maintained 100,000 men with their wives and families. Then their immense shipping was a menace to the security of the realm. They came into our roads and harbours with their guns and ordnance on board: sometimes three or four hundred sail of Hollanders sheltered in St George’s Channel, where our fleet, if need were, could always strike them. The whole trade of Christendom appeared to be going into their hands. Sir Nicholas was afraid they might join with the “Turks” against us; there was even risk of invasion unless measures were taken to curb their growing power. The measures he proposed were the delivery of Flushing and Brill as pledges of security, and the payment of £4,000,000 for the king’s license to carry on their fishery for twenty-one years on the British coasts. Otherwise they should be compelled to pay a tithe of the twentieth herring or be forbidden altogether.[271] Sir William Monson--who was a Roman Catholic, had been Admiral of the Narrow Sea, and was accused by the