Sir Dudley Carleton accordingly made a strong representation to the States-General on the subject in April. They asked for particulars as to the persons who were alleged to have been ill-treated in Scotland, and the nature of the wrongs done to them; while with respect to the limit proposed to be set them in their fishery--namely, not to come within sight of land--they said they had never heard of any such custom, and did not understand how it could be put into practice.[329] On reporting this home, Carleton was told by the king to raise the question of the fishing again before he came away, and he explained to him that the custom of the land-kenning was that no stranger should fish either within the creeks of the land or within a kenning of the land, “as seamen do take a kenning.” He asked Carleton to ascertain whether the Dutch claimed to fish wherever they liked, or were willing to accept reasonable bounds, adding that the resolution that might be taken on the subject would depend largely on this.[330] A few months before this Carleton had brought similar complaints to the notice of the States-General, declaring that the Hollanders were daily guilty of “great outrages and insolencies on the Scottish fishermen.” It was even said to be the opinion in London that the prosecution of the herring fishery by the Dutch under the protection of ships of war was a direct challenge to and defiance of the king.[331] The authorities in Scotland lost no time in preparing statements recounting in detail the outrages and insolences committed by the Dutch fishermen; but an impartial perusal of the complaints leaves little doubt that they were greatly exaggerated. The Dutch fishermen were accused of going ashore in large numbers and chasing, taking, and slaying sheep; they “intromitted” with growing timber, trod down all the corn they could find, induced the best and ablest of the native fishermen to join them, or even took them by force; entered the kirks, where they broke down the seats and polluted the pulpits; carved their names on the green pastures; took uninvited rides on the horses in the fields, “to the great hurt of the owners”; and made free with the eggs and young of seafowl on the uninhabited isles, to the hurt of the proprietors. In the long catalogue of their supposed outrages on land, two were more important. It was alleged that they gave refuge to thieves and malefactors, so that justice could not reach them; and that some years before they seized an honest young woman who was selling stockings among them and held her head-downwards on an eminence in sight of the whole fleet, owing to which she died later. Among their offences at sea they were charged with shooting at native fishermen, “catching of their small netts and lynes within those huge long netts” that they used, and which they laid hard by the shore, “whereas before they approached not nearer the coasts than fourty (_sic_) myles.”