Mr John Hay, the Town-Clerk of Edinburgh, was despatched to London to the king, to ask that the country might be freed of the objectionable Hollanders and the Seaforth charter withdrawn; and to declare that the Scottish burghs would themselves undertake the whole of the fishings at the Lewes and erect a burgh there. Secretary Coke, full of the fishery scheme, took advantage of Hay’s presence to obtain from him a detailed account of Lewis and its fisheries, and of the Dutch fishings on the coast of Scotland, which, it was said, sometimes employed a fleet of 3000 busses; and from the information acquired an “estimate of the charge of a fishing to be established in the island of Lewes in Scotland” was prepared. This document showed that ten Scottish fisher-boats, of from twenty-five to thirty tons each, might be bought for £1200, and other ten boats, of twelve to fourteen tons, for a proportionately smaller sum. Each of the large boats was to be equipped with 120 nets of twenty yards in length, and the smaller boats with forty nets of the same dimensions; and it was calculated that with a stock of £6743, 6s. 8d. a clear profit of £18,270 might be earned in one year. This alluring prospect was no doubt encouraging to Coke and his friends; but he learned from Hay some further information which must have been disquieting. He was told that the Scottish people would not permit any foreigners to fish within twenty-eight miles of their coast, or within the lochs, the fishings there being reserved for the natives; that by the laws of Scotland any stranger found fishing within these limits was liable to confiscation of goods and loss of life, citing as an example the story of the barbarous treatment by James V. of the Dutch fishermen who had transgressed the “reserved waters” by fishing in the Firth of Forth.[406] This point about the reserved waters was indeed the main difficulty which soon confronted the fishery scheme. To be successful, the fishing must be carried on along the Scottish coast and at the Isles, for it was there the great shoals of herrings resorted, but the objections of the Scottish Parliament, Council, and burghs had first to be overcome.[407]