The keenest dispute at this time was about the herring fishery. There were two principles in the article, Cromwell said, which required attention: first, the recognition of England’s right to the fishery; secondly, compensation for allowing the use of it. Unable to avoid the discussion, the envoys pleaded their immemorial possession and their treaties, and said that their liberty of fishing had never been disputed; besides, they asked, was it a friendly thing to make a proposal of the kind when they were about to conclude a strict and close alliance between the two countries? Cromwell, who had obviously been well posted up in the arguments in _Mare Clausum_, then entered upon a lengthy disquisition on the subject. He said the English could prove by authentic documents that they had had possession of the fishery from all time, and that other nations sought their permission to fish; that the clause in the treaty of 1496 (the Intercursus Magnus) upon which the Dutch relied, was omitted in later treaties; and that the treaties had expired owing to the subsequent wars between Queen Elizabeth and Spain, and had never been since renewed; they were not the same people with whom the treaties had been made, since they were now alienated from the House of Burgundy. And they could not establish their right by prescription, for by the civil law it required a hundred years for a just prescription, and the States had not existed so long as an independent nation. Moreover, long before the treaty of 1496, licenses for fishing had been sought and granted. Even King Philip II. in Queen Mary’s time had asked permission to fish for twenty-one years, and had paid £1000 a-year for the privilege. King James, too, had issued a proclamation in 1610 (_sic_) forbidding unlicensed fishing, while King Charles had demanded and received through the Earl of Northumberland an acknowledgment from their herring-busses.