On 9th August a statement was drawn up by the Convention and circulated to all the burghs, in which their opinion was asked as to whether any association with England in the fishings was expedient; whether the English should be suffered to “plant” or settle in any part of the Isles; whether, if the burghs undertook the fishing themselves, they should allow the nobility and gentry to “stock” with them, and if so on what conditions; and if not, whether the burghs should undertake it themselves by a company or by burgesses, and what sums might be subscribed for an exclusive company. On the following day it was complained in the Convention that, though the king had cancelled the patent to the Earl of Seaforth, the “Flemings” still remained in the Lewes; and the burghs thereupon decided that as the Privy Council had appointed commissioners from each of the Estates of Parliament to treat on the king’s proposals, their own commissioner, Mr John Hay, should be empowered to deal with the king in order to have the “Flemings” removed and the fishing “devolvit in thair hands”; to “stay” the proposed association with the English, or the plantation of strangers at any part of the kingdom where fishing was carried on; and to cause the “Flemings” to forbear from fishing on the Scottish coasts, “or not to cum neirer to the schoire of anie pairt of this kingdome than ane land kenning of the said schoire.” Meantime a smaller committee which had been appointed by Parliament, no doubt under the inspiration of the opposition of the burghs, reported against the association with England in the fishings. Such a course, they said, would be “verie inconvenient to the estait; and tuiching the land fishing, whilk consists in fishing within loches and yles and twenty aucht myles frome the land, and whilk is proper to the natives, and whairof they have been in continuall possessioun and neuer interrupted thairin be the Hollanders,”--a statement inconsistent with the frequent complaints made by the burghs in the reign of James. The burghs, they said, were able and content to undertake the “said land fishing” by themselves, without “communicating” therein with any other nation; and as for the buss-fishing, to which the king’s proposals specially referred, they stated that the season for it that year was passed, and that as it was a matter of great importance, it required time for consideration. The burghs reported to Parliament in the same sense.[412]