approved by their government, but it was fated that no very great result
was to be achieved by this embassy. Very elaborate documents, exhaustive
in legal lore, on the subject of the herring fisheries, and of the right
to fish in the ocean and on foreign coasts, fortified by copious
citations from the 'Pandects' and 'Institutes' of Justinian, were
presented for the consideration of the British government, and were
answered as learnedly, exhaustively, and ponderously. The English
ministers were also reminded that the curing of herrings had been
invented in the fifteenth century by a citizen of Biervliet, the
inscription on whose tombstone recording that faces might still be
read in the church of that town.

All this did not prevent, however, the Dutch herring fishermen from being
excluded from the British waters unless they chose to pay for licenses.

The conferences were however for a season interrupted, and a new aspect
was given to affairs by an unforeseen and terrible event.

Meanwhile it is necessary to glance for a moment at the doings of the
special embassy to France, the instructions for which were prepared by
Barneveld almost at the same moment at which he furnished those for the
commission to England.

The ambassadors were Walraven, Seignior of Brederode, Cornelis van der
Myle, son-in-law of the Advocate, and Jacob van Maldere. Remembering how
impatient the King of France had long been for their coming, and that all
the preparations and decisions for a great war were kept in suspense
until the final secret conferences could be held with the representatives
of the States-General, it seems strange enough to us to observe the
extreme deliberation with which great affairs of state were then