Coke’s scheme, which, like all the others, was based upon a close imitation of the Dutch system, met with great favour from the king and the court. Further consideration, moreover, led the promoters to believe that the success of the enterprise would be increased if operations were also undertaken at the Lewes instead of being confined to the east coast, and various schemes were propounded with this end in view. The suggestion appears to have emanated from Captain John Mason, and it was made at a time when the island was a bone of contention between the royal burghs of Scotland and the Earl of Seaforth, who had obtained from the king a charter to “erect” Stornoway into a royal burgh.[403] The burghs strenuously resisted the confirmation of this charter and refused to give effect to it, all the more since Seaforth had settled at Stornoway a number of Dutch people who were engaged in the fisheries there. From an interesting report by a Captain John Dymes, who visited Lewis in 1630 at the request of certain members of the Privy Council, and apparently in the interest of the proposed fishery society, we learn that the Dutch had been fishing there with great success. Their four busses, each with twenty-five nets and a crew of sixteen men, caught 300 lasts of herrings in three months, which were sold at Dantzic for 400 guilders or about £38 a last, which Dymes calculated would total £11,400, showing, after charges had been met, a gain for the three months’ work of £7500.[404] The Scottish burghs protested against the introduction of the Hollanders, which they said would ruin the whole trade and navigation of the kingdom and completely destroy the native fisheries. They petitioned the Privy Council to restrain strangers from resorting to the North and West Isles, pointing out that from the numbers of the Hollanders, their numerous ships and great commerce, they would draw the whole trade of the country into their hands, as they had done everywhere they had gone; and in a petition to the king they accused them of “great oppressions” in the Isles and on the coasts of the kingdom, and declared that by a “pretendit libertie obtenit of his father” they were “the over-throwes of the haill fischeing of this cuntry.”[405]