On their arrival in London they were met by two high Scottish personages, who had been awaiting their coming for some weeks. They took this for a bad sign, concluding from it that the king was resolved to raise the fishery question. They had several interviews with the Council and the king. On finding that their instructions limited them to the discussion of the two points on which there was least anxiety in England, the East India business and the whale-fishing, the Council received them coldly, Bacon indeed rating them soundly for coming without adequate powers. James himself was very angry, and made no effort to conceal his disappointment. He expressed astonishment that after all the complaints that had been made, and after all the negotiations that had gone on through the ambassadors at London and The Hague, they had ventured to come unprepared to deal with the principal matter in dispute. “The fishing,” he told them, “on the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, as a regality and point of sovereignty, was possessed by him alone, to the exclusion of all others.” Spain, he said, had asked leave to negotiate about freedom of fishing, while France enjoyed the privilege only under great limitations, a few small vessels being allowed to fish for the use of the Court and the king’s family.[356] How little becoming was it therefore, continued James with heat, that a Republic which had only been recognised for a few years should be the first to contest his sovereign rights! It was useless for them to plead unprofitable years and immemorial possession. He was king of the greatest islands in the world, and he knew very well the rights he had on the coasts of his three kingdoms.[357] He further informed them that he was bound by oath at his coronation to maintain the rights, liberties, and privileges of his crown, and that he would rather lose all that he had than give up his right to the fishings.[358] Declarations equally strong were expressed in despatches to the British ambassador at The Hague. The king, it was said, would not be taught the laws of nations “by them nor their Grotius.”[2] It would be to their advantage to ask the king’s leave for the fishing and to acknowledge his right as other princes had done, or it might well come to pass “that they that will needs bear all the world before them with their _Mare Liberum_, may soon come to have neither _Terram et solum_ nor _Rempublicam Liberam_,”--phrases which lead one to think that James penned the missive himself.[359] The Council intimated to the ambassadors that the king declined to discuss only the two points mentioned in their instructions, and that they must get powers from the States-General to deal with the question of the herring fishery.