 After several years as Attorney General, Grotius was appointed Pensionary (roughly equivalent to Governor of an American state) of Rotterdam in 1613. That same year, he was called to put theory into practice when a dispute arose between the English and the Dutch over the freedom of the seas. The details are interesting but complicated: in essence, on the basis of the claim that two Dutch vessels were trespassing on seas owned by England near Greenland, a small British fleet seized the contents of the Dutch ships. Grotius led a delegation to England in protest of the English actions. While history may have favored Grotius—his view that the seas are open to all would eventually come to be international law—real politick made victory impossible for him at the time. The English were more powerful than the Dutch, and they neither returned the cargo nor conceded the legal point.