Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/226

 any vessel from England who happened first to enter any harbour or creek in the island after the 25th of March should be admiral of the said harbour or creek during the ensuing fishing season, and should see the rules and orders laid down in the Act duly put into execution within the limits of the jurisdiction thus assigned to him. It was also expressly enacted that no subject of any foreign power "shall at any time hereafter take any bait, or use any sort of trade or fishing in Newfoundland, or in any of the adjacent islands;" though this complete exclusion of other rivals was not persevered in.

A few years after the Revolution measures were taken to revive the Greenland fishery; and in 1692 a company, incorporated for carrying it on with a capital of 40,000l., was granted by charter the exclusive possession of the trade for fourteen years. The preamble of their Act describes the previous trade to Greenland as "quite decayed and lost," the merchants, who had been encouraged to enter into this business, in virtue of the previous Act of 1673, having only imported a small quantity of oil, blubber, and whale fins. They had found other nations enter into the trade with so large a number of ships, that the English fishermen were not enabled to compete with them on their separate interests; indeed the whole trade was then or soon after engrossed by foreigners. At length it was represented to the government that for several years no ships had been despatched from England to Greenland, and that the produce of those fisheries had been wholly bought from foreigners, the prices paid being six times the rates they formerly were; and the