But another Dutchman in this year assumed the task which Graswinckel had fruitlessly essayed. This was Pontanus, Professor of Philosophy and History in the College of Harderwyck in Guelderland, who also occupied the office of Historiographer to the King of Denmark. He had thus, like Grotius, to be cautious in his refutation of Selden’s general arguments upon the appropriation and dominion of seas, because the claims of Denmark to such property and dominion were notorious. But he was free to contest the particular rights of England, which he did with zest. He subjected Selden’s chapters, almost _seriatim_, to a rigorous criticism, beginning with the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons. He made the most of the declarations of Elizabeth as to the freedom of the seas for navigation and fishing, and of her State Paper of 1602 (see p. 110); and he dealt specially with the sovereignty over the northern seas--the _Mare Caledonium_ and those flowing between the Scandinavian countries and Iceland and Greenland--which he asserted were not, and never had been, under the dominion of England, but always appertained to the Scandinavian nations. Pontanus entered very fully into the negotiations which had taken place between England and Scotland on the one hand, and Norway and Denmark on the other, concerning those seas and the rights of navigating and fishing at Iceland and Greenland--subjects on which, from his official position, he had special knowledge.[677] In the same year another author, and he a Frenchman, entered the field in defence of the appropriation and dominion of seas,[678] while a somewhat virulent controversy broke out between Poland and Denmark as to the sovereignty of the Baltic Sea, which was claimed by each, as it had been shortly before by Sweden, and formed, indeed, one of the causes of the war by Gustavus Adolphus against Germany.[679] The juridical controversies respecting the appropriation and dominion of the seas continued throughout the whole of the seventeenth century and well on into the next, and so far as this country was concerned, they were particularly vehement during the first and the third Dutch wars. CHAPTER X. THE PARLIAMENT, THE COMMONWEALTH, AND THE PROTECTORATE. THE FIRST DUTCH WAR.