port to be tried for their high contempt. Moreover--and it looks but a small thing by comparison,--no foreigners were to be permitted to fish in British waters without first receiving the king’s license so to do, and paying to him a tax in acknowledgment of the permission. In this way Charles hoped to restore the sovereignty of the King of England in the British seas--that “fairest flower of the imperial crown,” as he described it--to “its ancient style and lustre.” That a scheme so preposterous was seriously entertained and for a time attempted to be realised showed the inherent incapacity of the king for rational government. He was no more able to gauge his strength in relation to foreign Powers than he was to foresee that the contest he had entered into with his own subjects would end in rebellion and the scaffold. It was ridiculous to suppose that other nations would tamely surrender their sovereign rights in the seas off their own coasts and ports, abandon the protection of their commerce and shipping and their rights as belligerents, simply because the King of England wished to be lord of the sea. Had Charles been able to give effect to his selfish and ambitious scheme, he would soon have been confronted with an overwhelming coalition of maritime Powers, to whom the free use of the sea was as necessary as it was to England. As it happened, war was averted by the dexterity of Richelieu and the prudence and patience of the Dutch; and also, it must be added, by the vacillation of Charles himself, who was always trying to arrange some new combination with Continental Governments to carry out the only policy to which he was true--the recovery of the Palatinate for his nephew. It may be supposed that the splendour of the _rôle_ attributed to the early kings of England as lords of the sea, would by itself appeal to the narrow imagination of one so deeply imbued as Charles was with a belief in the divine prerogative of kings; and the dominion of the seas was claimed as peculiarly a prerogative of the crown. But there were other more practical and less exalted inducements. The assumption of the _rôle_ of the Plantagenet kings was intimately related to the state of home affairs and the means taken for the equipment of a fleet. Parliament having refused supply and been dissolved, recourse was ultimately had to the famous ship-money writs, by which it was possible to obtain the necessary ships independently of Parliament, as had been done by the early kings. To declare that these measures were indispensable for the maintenance of the sovereignty of the sea in its ancient style and lustre was well adapted to lessen their unpopularity, if anything could. It was a declaration “exactly calculated for the meridian of England,”[394] for the English people in all ages have been prone to maritime glory and willing and anxious to make sacrifices for the sake of the navy, upon which their national safety depends.