whole of the sea fisheries and fish-curing industries of the country, as well as the foreign exports, under the control of the Council of the Society. The whole business was then to be organised and developed in such a manner that the Dutch fishermen would be driven from the British seas, and the nation to which they belonged deprived of the commanding position which, it was believed, their fisheries had been the chief means of conferring. But the patience and perseverance of Charles in wearing out the opposition of Scotland to his scheme, and in giving it the semblance of a national design, were most inadequately rewarded. Like almost everything to which he put his hand, the fishery association failed miserably. The Scottish burghs promised to equip sixty busses for the fishing in the following year, but in point of fact the Scottish people took scarcely any part in the operations of the Society. The London merchants, canvassed personally by Sir Thomas Roe and appealed to by Pembroke, also held aloof. They gave “fair answers,” but kept their money. The subscriptions, or stock, came almost exclusively from persons about the Court, from naval officers and others desirous of preferment. The first meeting of the Council was called for 24th January, but so few members attended that the meeting had to be adjourned until 19th February, when it took place in the Star Chamber. Oaths were administered, two silver seals were ordered (and never paid for) at a cost of £12, and Captain John Mason was made “Admiral of their fleet” of busses. Differences of opinion soon arose in the Council, and the Society split up into two branches or associations, one under Weston (now Earl of Portland),--that “man of big looks and of a mean and abject spirit,” as Clarendon describes him,--and after his death, under the Earl of Arundel; the other branch under the Earl of Pembroke, the Lord Chamberlain, who appears to have been almost the only one, besides the king and Coke, who took a sincere personal interest in the Society. Portland’s society had its headquarters at Lewis, while Pembroke’s was more particularly designed to carry on operations at Shetland and the east coast, but also had a station in the Lewes. The total amount of the subscriptions to the Society up to 3rd February 1636 was £22,682, 10s., of which only £9914, 10s. was paid up, and the company had been forced to borrow £3550 at interest to set the scheme afloat. The stock of Portland’s association amounted altogether to £16,975 up to and including the year 1637, while the losses in the same period reached £21,071, 5s. 7d.