The Dutch mercantile marine in fact far exceeded the English in numbers and efficiency.

The publication of Hugo Grotius' famous pamphlet, _Mare Liberum_, in March, 1609, was probably the final cause which decided James to issue his Fisheries' proclamation.

The purpose of Grotius was to claim for every nation, as against the Portuguese, freedom of trade in the Indian Ocean, but the arguments he used appeared to King James and his advisers to challenge the _dominium maris_, which English kings had always claimed in the "narrow seas." The embassy of 1610, therefore, had to deal not merely with the fisheries, but with the whole subject of the maritime relations of the two countries; and a crowd of published pamphlets proves the intense interest that was aroused.

But the emergence of the dispute as to the Juelich-Cleves succession, and the change in the policy of the French government owing to the assassination of Henry IV, led both sides to desire an accommodation; and James consented, not indeed to withdraw the edict, but to postpone its execution for two years.

It remained a dead letter until 1616, although all the time the wranglings over the legal aspects of the questions in dispute continued.