Hitchcock was a gentleman and a soldier who, in 1553, as he himself tells us, while serving the Emperor Charles V. in his wars in the Low Countries, had observed with astonishment that the wealth and shipping of Zealand and Holland were due to their sea fisheries. Pondering on his discovery, he thought out a plan some years later by which a great national fishery might be established in England to supplant the Dutch, so that the wealth acquired by them in the British seas might go to profit his own countrymen. It was the first of the innumerable schemes of the kind which are to be found scattered over the economic literature of the next two centuries. Having reduced his plan to writing, he submitted it about the year 1573 to the Earl of Leicester, in 1575 to Queen Elizabeth, and in the following year he distributed copies to men of influence, in the hope “that God would stir up some good man to set out this work.” It appears even to have been brought to the notice of Parliament by Sir Leonard Digges, but its consideration was deferred “for want of time.”[176] The copy presented to the Queen is preserved among the Burghley Papers in the British Museum,[177] and the completed work, somewhat enlarged,--now very rare,--was published (in black-letter) on 1st January 1580 as “A New Year’s Gift to England.”[178] The plan of Hitchcock was to borrow £80,000 for three years, when the whole amount would be repaid from the proceeds of the fish sold. The shires were to be arranged in eight groups, each group providing with its £10,000 fifty fishing vessels of not less than 70 tons burthen, or 400 altogether. These were to be built after the manner of “Flemysche Busses” and distributed at eighty ports around the coast; and at eight of the chief ports (London, Yarmouth, Hull, Newcastle, Chester, Bristol, Exeter, and Southampton) two “honest and substantial men of credit” were to be appointed chief officers, to act as treasurers, purveyors, and directors. Hitchcock estimated that each ship when ready for fishing would cost £200; the crews were to consist of a skilled master, twelve mariners or fishermen, and twelve “strong lustie beggers or poore men taken upp through the land.”[179] The scheme proposed that the busses should first fish for herrings on the coast of England and Ireland during the fourteen or fifteen weeks this fishing lasted, the herrings being cured and branded after the “Flemish” fashion. The busses were also to visit Newfoundland for cod and ling; or some were to go to Iceland, “Wardhouse,”[180] the north seas of England and Scotland, or to Ireland. It was intended to employ some of them in winter in exporting the surplus of cured fish to France, “or elsewhere.” As for the all-important question of earnings, it was calculated that each buss would catch at least 50 lasts, or 600 barrels, of herrings, worth £10 a last; altogether £200,000 from this item,[181] and if two voyages were made, the amount would be doubled.