Within a year or two another project came from an unexpected quarter. No less a personage than the queen became a suppliant for a royal patent empowering her to compound with strangers for licenses to fish on the British coasts. The arguments adduced from the point of view of benefit to the nation were of the usual kind; but others of a more or less domestic nature were added, which must have appealed to the heart of her consort. “It is desired by the Queene,” proceeds the petition, “that the King’s Majesty will be pleased to graunt unto her a Pattent of theis fishings under his Majesty’s great Seales of England and Scotland, whereby her Majesty may have power to graunt lycense and to compound with these strangers for an yearly revenue to be paid unto her Majestie for theis fishings.” By this means a great revenue would be drawn into the country, which would be sufficient to support and maintain her estate, “and so his Majesty’s coffers will be spared.” She promised besides that she would give him a full fifth of the amount she obtained; and another advantage would be that the king would be “royally invested in possession of his undoubted right, which,” she naïvely added, “hath never ben yet obtayned by anie of his royall progenitors.” The petition was brought before the Privy Council, who decided that the proposal was not feasible, as it depended upon “so many points of question and circumstance between us and the House of Burgundy in former times, and the States of the Low Countries and us for the present.”[300] In her petition the queen referred to the proposal to build a number of busses. While explaining that her project would not prevent the king or any of his subjects from building busses if they so desired, she questioned whether that plan would be successful. Some men, indeed, of great judgment, she said, were of opinion that the king would reap no benefit at all in that way, for 1000 busses was “the least number that could be thought to doe any good upon this fishing,” and each would cost £1000 at least, while £100 a-year would be required for repairs, and 20,000 men would be needed to man them.