could not have produced such a book without prolonged labour; and it may be guessed that, observing the trend of the king’s policy and becoming desirous of royal favour, he began to reconstruct his treatise very soon after leaving prison. The political significance of Selden’s work was instantly recognised both at home and abroad. It appeared at the time when the pretensions of Charles to the dominion of the sea were astonishing Europe. While the printers were still busy with it, the Earl of Lindsey’s fleet was scouring the Channel to force the elusive squadrons of France to strike to the king’s flag. The longing to compel homage to the flag burned like a fever in the breasts of naval officers; and despatches poured in from them announcing that Dutch, Danish, and even occasionally French, ships had been forced to strike, sometimes in their own waters. The supposed policy of the Plantagenets had been expounded in high-sounding despatches to foreign Courts, and formulated in Admiralty instructions. The Dutch fisheries had been threatened; and it was known everywhere that the King of England was preparing a formidable fleet to sweep the seas in the following year. Charles did what he could to emphasise the importance of the book. When a pirated edition appeared within a few months at Amsterdam, bearing the name of the king’s printers and the word London in imitation of the original edition, and with a print of the great Burgundy treaty, the Intercursus Magnus, and a tract appended by way of antidote, he complained to the Dutch ambassador, and issued a proclamation declaring that _Mare Clausum_ had been published by his express commands, denouncing those who had produced the pirated copy, and banning it from the realm.[664] On 26th March, as the following record shows, he brought it before the Privy Council with high eulogy, and for a definite purpose: “His Majesty this day in Council took into consideration a book lately published by John Selden, Esquire, intituled _Mare Clausum, seu de Dominio Maris_, written by the king’s command, which he had done with great industry, learning and judgment, and hath asserted the right of the Crown of England to the Dominion of the British seas. The King requires one of the said books to be kept in the Council-Chest, another in the Court of Exchequer, and a third in the Court of Admiralty, as faithful and strong evidence of the Dominion of the British seas.”[665]