It was not long before advantage was taken abroad of Charles’s troubles in Scotland. In the early part of 1638 Pennington reported that there were many Hollander, French, and Dunkirk ships at sea, and that they were pillaging English vessels;[589] but the king was unable to protect even the herring-busses of the Fishery Society that he had taken under his peculiar care. The Dunkirkers, emboldened by immunity, took four of them in 1639, and then daringly anchored in the Downs. The Dutch men-of-war became bold, and then insolent. They began by protecting a Calais vessel that had rifled an English ship, their Admiral refusing to surrender her. Soon their fleets visited the English coasts in menacing strength, and although they “performed their duty” in the matter of the flag, they insisted on their right to stop and search English vessels, even in the King’s Chambers. “The Hollanders’ ships,” wrote Northumberland’s secretary to Pennington in June 1639, “begin to be very bold in our seas, and lie about Portland with fifty sail, examining and searching all English ships and others which pass by them, so that in effect they command where the King challenges sovereignty.” The English merchants, he said, made great complaint that their trade was likely to be destroyed; they were “much perplexed, and called to mind tonnage and poundage, for which his Majesty was pleased to promise thirty sail of his ships to secure trade in the Narrow Sea.”[590] The truth was that English ships had been engaged in transporting Spanish troops and bullion to Dunkirk, and that the Dutch were merely exercising their rights as belligerents. Their action was nevertheless a plain flouting of the high pretensions of the king, and it was the more disagreeable because Charles had now again veered round to the side of Spain. He was much moved at the “insolencies” of the Hollanders, which “concerned his honour” and “put his sovereignty in hazard”; and the Earl of Northumberland, who had been created Lord High Admiral in the preceding year, also expressed himself as much afflicted that such affronts were put on the nation in his time. It was, said Windebank, a very high disorder that any of the king’s neighbours should presume to lie with a fleet in his Majesty’s Channel, near his ports, and where he justly claimed sovereignty, and arrest and search English ships, taking out of them “such persons, being passengers, as they please”; “especially”--and this no doubt was a potent reason of the king’s displeasure--“since the merchants and others took occasion by such pretences of interruption of their trade to make difficulty to pay their ship-money, which his Majesty is resolved to maintain.” The king therefore commanded Pennington to put a stop to these affronts and to preserve the sovereignty of the narrow seas, so “that trade may be free and open, as well to his Majesty’s subjects as to others in league and amity with his Majesty, and that peace be kept and the merchants