historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 4. Times of success. Defending the fatherland
Hard-won unity or sealed discord?
The road to Münster
Much to the relief of the Dutch, Charles I and Christian IV had a hard time to
enforce their claims. Christian IV did make a serious attempt. After 1630 he
returned to his aggressive mercantilist policy, steadily raising the Sound dues
and imposing new ones at Glückstad at the Elbe estuary. He also teamed up
with Spain, concluding several maritime treaties with that country that were
specifically directed against the Dutch. The States General objected, but could
not respond with force to make their objections hard, unwilling to divert men
and resources while the war with Spain was still in a crucial phase. When in
1645 they finally did flex their muscles, Christian IV, who had just suffered
some severe blows by the hands of the Swedes, quickly gave in. That same
year he signed the Treaty of Christianopel; it contained a large number of concessions
that secured Dutch maritime interests in the Baltic. 66
While Christian IV in the end proved to be much talk but no show, Charles
I found himself in an equally weak position to really trouble the Dutch at
sea. The most profound example of English maritime powerlessness came
on October 21, 1639, when Maarten Tromp (1598-1653), lieutenant-admiral of
Holland, destroyed a great Spanish fleet that had taken shelter in the Downs,
an anchorage between Dover and Deal, while an English naval squadron
stood by and watched. 67 Charles I was deeply offended by this clear violation
of English neutrality in waters over which he claimed sovereignty. But he
was unable to react, too hampered by a chronical shortage of money and too
distracted by the unfolding political crisis in his own kingdoms. 68 Some three
ever, thought differently and on April 28, 1636, they ordered Graswinckel to deliver a response to Selden’s
work. Graswinckel took his time; almost a year later (April 4, 1637) did the States General receive his reply
to Mare Clausum. The States General discussed Graswinckel’s response, but gave the book to a commission
for further examination. The commission stalled their report which in the end never came. Graswinckel’s
treatise remained unpublished. Muller, Mare Clausum, pp. 283-84. Grotius, himself unable to respond to
Selden’s work because he now served the interests of the Swedish crown, which claimed to possess a dominium
maris in the Baltic, ‘followed its fortunes and the attacks on it with close attention’. The States General’s
decision to forbid Graswinckel’s treatise to be published (the States General had paid Graswinckel a pension
of 500 florins on the condition that the work would remain unpublished) disappointed him. Gerald J.
Toomer, “John Selden, the Levant and the Netherlands in the History of Scholarship”, in Alastair Hamilton,
Maurits H. van den Boogert and Bart Westerweel (eds.), Intersections: Yearbook for Early Modern Studies, Vol.
5: The Republic of Letters and the Levant (Brill; Leiden/Boston, 2005), pp. 70-72. With the outbreak of the First
Anglo-Dutch War there was a new demand for a scholarly refutation of English maritime pretensions.
A work written by Graswinckel appeared, called the Maris liberi Vindiciae adversus Petrum Baptistam Burgum
Ligustici Maritimi Dominii Assertotem (Adrian Vlacq; The Hague, 1652). Graswinckel’s main arguments
against Selden can be found in this treatise. For an analysis of Graswinckel’s treatise, see G.J. Liesker, Die
Staatswissenschaftlichen Anschauungen Dirck Graswinkel’s (Gebrüder Fragnière; Freiburg, 1901), pp. 224-41.
66 Israel, Dutch Primacy in World Trade, pp. 146-49, and Frost, The Northern Wars, pp. 137-38.
67 Edmundson, Anglo-Dutch Rivalry, p. 123, and Israel, The Dutch Republic, p. 537.
68 These two issues were closely interrelated. Although Charles I managed to raise an army to put
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