In carrying out his Spanish policy, Charles’s first task was to deceive his Council.[465] For this purpose no better agent could have been chosen than Coke, who, as we have seen, was by this time enthusiastic about the sovereignty of the seas, and was known to be hostile to Spain. He was accordingly directed to prepare a report for the king on the unsatisfactory relations between England and foreign countries, and the need of providing a fleet. In the long statement he drew up, Coke described how the credit of the country had been lowered abroad, and innumerable wrongs and insolences suffered in various parts of the world, because of the want of a sufficient navy to make our name respected. “All free trade,” he wrote, “is interrupted”; within the king’s own chambers squadrons of men-of-war from Biscay and Flanders took not only Hollanders, but Frenchmen, Hamburgers, and his Majesty’s subjects. From the Hollanders “we suffered most by their intrusion on our fishings and pretence of _Mare Liberum_,” and they pursued and took prizes in our ports and rivers. But our trade and rights were injured everywhere,--from Constantinople and Morocco to Denmark and Sweden,--and Coke recommended that the navy should be reinforced in order that the king might obtain justice and “recover his undoubted right of sovereignty in all his seas.”[466] Coke read his report to the Council in June 1634; the ship-money writs were issued in October; and in May next year the first of the “ship-money fleets” was ready and was placed under the command of the Earl of Lindsey, with special instructions to maintain the king’s sovereignty of the sea.