SIR FRANCIS DRAKE AND THE PLYMOUTH CORPORATION. 517 
"The Bill for the Haven of Plymouth, and the Bill for the 
Inning of Plimpton Marsh, were each of them read the second 
time, and committed to the former Committees in the Bill for the 
Town of Stonehouse, to meet at the same time and place, and the 
Bills were both of them delivered to Sir Francis Drake, one of the 
said Committees."* 
[Thursday, the 29th of March, 1593.] "Mr. Broughton, Mr. 
Attorney of the Dutchy, Sir Thomas Dennis, and Sir Francis 
Gudolphen, were added to the former Committees on the Bill for 
the Haven of Plymouth (who had been appointed on Monday, the 
26th day [sic] of this instant March foregoing, and appointed to 
meet at two of the Clock in the Afternoon of this present day."t 
Here then we have Drake acting as Chairman of a Select Com- 
mittee on a Bill which alleged that the Corporation of Plymouth 
had wrested a public work to their private profit, whereas the act 
complained of was his and not theirs, and which, by way of 
penalty, ordered the removal of the offending mills. How are we 
to construe this 1 If Drake is entitled to personal credit for sitting 
on the Committee of the Water Act, it is equally clear that personal 
discredit must attach to him for his chairmanship of a Committee 
which affirmed the principle of a bill that — as he well knew — 
threw blame and responsibility on the shoulders of the wrong 
party. In the absence of the mill lease, not then granted, the 
mills were indeed de jure under the Corporation, but de facto his. 
The measure of special gratitude affirmed in the former case — if 
the assumption of Drake's paramount influence is seriously argued 
could be conducted round above the creek. It is not likely that anything very 
effectual was done under this statute ; for Mr. Woollcombe 1 quotes from some 
Corporation entry which I have not yet been able to trace, " that a grant was 
made in the lifetime of Sir Richard Edgcumbe, that he and his tenants of 
Stonehouse should be permitted to take near Little Pennycomequick a small 
stream of water, an inch in diameter, "from the new river or mill leat 
running to the Town," to be by the grantees conveyed to Stonehouse, when 
the water might be spared by the Plymouth folk without damage to the town 
or mills there. This was confirmed in July, 1688, but withdrawn in July, 
1713, from an apprehension that Plymouth had not water enough to supply 
the increased number of inhabitants. 
The Sir Richard Edgcumbe here referred to must have been either Sir 
Richard who succeeded his father, Sir Peter, in 1607, and died in 1638, or 
Sir Richard, son of Sir Piers, who succeeded his father in 1660, and died in 
1688 ; most probably the latter. 
* Op. cit. Commons Journal, p. 510. t Op. cit. p. 512. 
1 MS. History of Plymouth. 
