With regard to the other matter about which James had desired “the most perfect information,”--his right to exclude foreigners from fishing on his coasts,--the Council had the greatest difficulty in discovering anything whatever pertaining to it. It was the most important part of the question to come before the commissioners, because the States had already issued a strongly-worded edict forbidding their people from committing any wrongs upon the Scottish people (p. 179), and the king could scarcely make out a just case for prohibiting the Hollanders from fishing on this ground alone. He desired to show, what he no doubt fully believed, that his claims were supported by historical precedents and the laws of Scotland, and that none of the treaties on which the Dutch always relied in such negotiations were contrary to his claims. In his letter to the Council he therefore repeated the request that the public records should be searched, and desired that Lords Lauderdale and Balmerino, the Laird of Lundy, and others into whose hands such documents might have come, “from their ancestors, Chancellors, secretaries, clerks of register, ambassadors, or councillors of state,” should try to find any which bore upon the matter, and to have them forwarded to him without delay. The terms of the king’s letter show plainly enough the confusion and imperfection of the Scottish state records at that time; and the Lords of the Council sought high and low to discover copies of the treaties or any other official papers relating to the subject, but for a long time without any success. Copies of some of the treaties were afterwards found, but nothing to establish the king’s right to exclude the Hollanders from the fishery. In these circumstances the Council advised the commissioners “to proceed warily,” and to make the Dutch ambassadors produce what they had to show for their claim to the fishing, and then to answer that.[355] But as things turned out, it was of no immediate importance whether or not the Scottish commissioners were armed with documentary proofs of the king’s claims to the fishery. The Dutch ambassadors, as has been said, came without any powers to treat on that subject. In their private instructions, indeed, they were enjoined to avoid carefully any discussion about the herring fishery. If it was forced upon them, they were to point out that the States had already issued a proclamation to prevent wrongs being done to Scottish fishermen, which would be strictly enforced. If this was not sufficient, they were to fall back on general arguments as to the natural freedom of the sea, their immemorial possession of the fishery and its paramount importance to their country, and to plead for delay on account of the confusion and difficulties of their home affairs.