These two vessels having caught twenty-two walrus, were met by some English vessels bound to Russia, who hail'd them, and demanded whether they had pasports from the King of Great Britain to fish at Greenland?
The Dutchmen answered, that the Sea was free, and they had pasports from Count Maurice their Stadtholder.

"That is not enough, said the English[61]: and to let you know that that sea belongs to the King our master, if you will not give us instantly the walrus you have taken, with your boats, nets, and instruments for killing them, we'll send you to the bottom." The two Dutch vessels, unable to resist, were obliged to obey.

Returning to Holland, they made their complaint; and the affair being laid before the States, it was resolved that Grotius, who had written on the subject and was more master of it than any one, should be sent to England to demand justice: But, says the _Mercure Francois_, he found the old proverb true: The strongest are masters of the sea, and such never care to make restitution: so that he could obtain no satisfaction.
This denial of justice from the English determined the Dutch not to go to Greenland for the future without a force sufficient to revenge themselves on the English, or to have nothing to fear from them.
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.