Charles himself came forward to help them with an alternative plan to that of the “reserved waters.” The ground upon which the claim to the latter was based had gradually shifted. The initial argument that the surrounding seas pertained to Scotland as an independent kingdom--that they were the “seas of Scotland”--had been disposed of by the declaration that the right to the sea and to its fisheries was a prerogative of the crown; and it could not be denied that though no union of the kingdoms had taken place, there certainly had been union of the crowns. The question of the prerogative was a thorny one, which the Scottish commissioners had to avoid; and the claim to the reserved waters was now made solely on behalf of the poor inhabitants of certain parts of the coast, who subsisted mainly by their fishing in the sea, and would, it was said, be reduced to poverty and indigence unless these waters were reserved for their exclusive use. To meet this objection, Coke proposed a resolution at one of the meetings that the king should be asked to lay down a regulation to guard against interference with the poor fishermen at the places where the fishing of the company would be carried on, and at the next meeting a draft in the king’s handwriting, perhaps laid on the table by Charles himself, was read as follows: “The English commissioners desire to take away all showes of wordes that may show diffidence between the two nations, and hauing heard that the Scots commissioners are to desire some places to be reserved from the company or association, it is conceived this to be the fitter way:--That instead of those reservations, that the association should appoint the same fishermen that now fishe in them, [so that they] may continue as particular company of the said association, and to be subject [to] the law of the same, and are willing that no others should fish in those places, [unless] it be found upon examination that those places may admit more fishermen than those that now fish in them, and in that case the great committee of the association shall add such to them as they shall think fit, desiring them always to remember that the said committee is compounded equally of both nations.”[431] The king’s proposition was in keeping with the intention of Coke, “to bring all private fishing vessels under the company,” and though it was obviously impracticable, it furnished a plausible argument against the claim to reserved waters.