There is, unfortunately, little contemporary evidence as to the precise extent of the claim to the fisheries which was anciently put forward in Scotland. The Acts of the Scottish Parliaments do not help us very far, although they reveal the jealous and conservative spirit previously referred to. Many statutes were made prohibiting strangers from buying fish except such as were salted and barrelled, and then only at free burghs; concerning the “assize-herring,” of which so much was to be heard; and the payment of customs by foreigners exporting fish. The language of some of the Acts implied a certain control over foreign fishermen on the sea,[151] and all that we know of the practice and customs in Scotland makes it highly probable that these enactments were in point of fact enforced against foreign fishermen as far as they could be. The Scots were always particularly jealous about the fishings in the firths and lochs “within land.” An important herring fishery of this kind was carried on in the lochs on the west coast, especially in Loch Broom and Loch Fyne, in autumn and winter, by fishermen from the Clyde, the Ayrshire coast, and Fifeshire, who built timber houses on shore where they cured the herrings; and this fishing was attended by Frenchmen, “Flemings,” and English, who purchased the cured herrings or bought the fish and cured them themselves.[152] Wishing to catch the herrings for themselves, these “divers strangers” most earnestly petitioned Queen Mary in 1566 for “license to fish in the said lochs.” But the Council, to whom the petition was referred, after consultation with the burghs, refused the request, and ordained that “no stranger of whatever nation they be come in the said lochs, nor use the commodity of the said fishing in any time to come, but the same to be reserved for the born subjects and natives of the realm,” under pain of confiscation of ships and goods.[153] Some of the old Scots Acts, of the reign of James III. (1460-1488) and later, refer to previous statutes, which seem to be lost, respecting the herring fishery in the western seas; and they indicate that “letters” had sometimes been granted by the king favouring foreigners in some way, but whether by allowing them to fish there is unknown.