and if they had not broken their cargoes, without paying any customs or dues.[696] These stipulations paraphrased corresponding provisions in the Intercursus Magnus, and rather more favourably to the Dutch. If they had been accepted, they would have destroyed the English policy which had been pursued, though fitfully, from 1609 to the outbreak of the Civil War, of requiring foreigners to pay tribute and take out licenses for fishing on the British coasts. Some of the other articles proposed by the Dutch were directed against the claims put forward in Selden’s _Mare Clausum_, and by Charles himself, to a special dominion and jurisdiction of England in the surrounding seas. If the freedom of commerce and navigation was to be assured, it would be necessary, it was said, for both countries to equip fleets to secure the safety and liberty of the subjects of both, to purge the sea of pirates and sea-rovers, and to preserve the security of commerce and of fishing. The proposition was that each state should set forth a fleet yearly, its strength to be fixed by mutual agreement, and the ocean as well as the North Sea and the Mediterranean, with their straits and channels, were to be patrolled by the two fleets, each under its own admiral and flag. This was in effect asking the Commonwealth not only for equality of sovereignty on the sea, but for the assistance of England in protecting the immense commerce and shipping of the United Provinces. They desired that each nation should shield and defend the merchant vessels of the other, and help to recover them if taken by an enemy. Among other proposals were that men-of-war, but only in small numbers, should be allowed freely into the ports and havens of the other, and were not to be subjected to visitation and search, the showing of the commission to be sufficient; and that no sea-rovers were to be tolerated in harbours, and no ships with letters of marque allowed to leave without first providing security that they would not exceed their commissions. One of the provisions went much further, and seems to smack of Dutch humour, when we think of the action of James and Charles. For the sake of liberty, both peoples were to use their fleets, not only against pirates, but against all and sundry, whomsoever they might be, who should attempt to molest, hinder, or--“against the right of all peoples”--impose exactions on their commerce, navigation, or their fishery. In such an event, if amicable remonstrances failed, the whole sea forces of each nation were to attack the depredators and wage war against them until complete satisfaction had been obtained.[697]