The dispute growing serious, to prevent any acts of hostility, and to know on what grounds they went, a conference was held in 1615 between the Commissaries of England and Holland, in which the debate turned chiefly on the whale-fishery.  Grotius, who was one of the Commissaries from the Province of Holland, gives the history of this conference in a Letter to Du Maurier, dated at Rotterdam, June 5, 1615.  The Dutch Commissaries put the English to silence, by demonstrating, that neither the land nor the sea of Greenland belonged to them, and that they had no right to hinder the Dutch to navigate and catch whales in that sea, of which none could claim the property.  That the land did not belong to them, because till the year 1596 no mortal had set foot on it; that the Dutch discovered it the year before, and gave it the name it still retains, as may be seen in all the modern geographers, on the globes, and carts.  The English wanted to reply that Hugh Willoughby discovered it in 1553:  but the Dutch shewed even by the Journal of his voyage, that setting out from Finland he landed on the Island which bears his name, at a great distance from Greenland; that he died of hunger and cold, with all his companions, on the coast of Lapland, where the Laplanders found him, next summer, and from whence his Journals were sent to England.  The English, not knowing what to answer, said, it was a high indignity to their master, to dispute a right of which he had hitherto been in peaceable possession; and that their instructions imported, they should break off the conference unless the Dutch would acknowledge England’s claim to Greenland.  What was still more diverting (continued Grotius) they added, that they had not then their titles, but would shew them to Caron, the Dutch Agent in England, and, they flattered themselves, on seeing them, he would yield the point.  They like better (adds he in the conclusion) to deal with him, than dispute with us, because they will take his silence, as they have done already, for submission.

FOOTNOTES: 

[61] Mercure Francois, an. 1613.

XXIII.  If Grotius had ground to be dissatisfied with the disingenuousness and injustice of the English Ministry in his negotiation concerning the Fishery, he had at least reason to be pleased with the politeness of King James, who, Casaubon informs us, gave Grotius a most gracious reception, and was charmed with his conversation.  But the greatest pleasure he received by this voyage was the intimate friendship he contracted with Casaubon.  They knew one another before by character, and highly esteemed each other.  They were made to be intimate friends:  in both the most profound erudition was joined with the most perfect probity.  They had still another sympathy to knit faster the band of this union:  both ardently wished to see all Christians united in one faith and desired nothing more, than to be employed in that great work.