76 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
SIE FEANCIS DEAKE EEHABILITATED AND 
MEMORIALISED. 
ABSTRACT OF PAPER BY REV. J. ERSKINE RISK. 
(Read December 1st, 1881.) 
The Lecturer said the subject of his lecture was of a twofold nature ; 
for he had first to consider whether certain conclusions lately drawn 
from the omission of certain entries, which they might have ex- 
pected to find in a recently-discovered public record, were sufficient 
to counterbalance the testimony of previously accepted history; 
and secondly, whether, in the event of the total or partial confirma- 
tion, on the one hand, or the total or partial overthrow, on the 
other hand, of the theory based on this documental treasure-trove, 
they were to deem their national Elizabethan hero worthy of a 
place in the national Walhalla so soon, as they hoped, to be erected 
on the Plymouth Hoe. Was Sir Francis Drake to be deprived of 
every scrap of credit deemed to belong to him for the gift of the 
Plymouth water at its fountain head, and his pains in bringing it, 
in channels of his own devising, into Plymouth, simply on the 
pretext of his having contracted with the Corporation for the 
bringing in of the water, and the purchase of the land over which 
it would have to pass % Or else, if they did that, what were they 
to think of what the Corporation in 1601 themselves wrote to 
Sir E. Cecil, in a letter complaining of Mr. Crymes and others' 
encroachments on their rights ; namely, that the bringing in of the 
water was accomplished at great cost to themselves and to Sir 
Francis Drake, and that it had been carried out by him with " very 
great care and diligence " 1 
Examining the rebutting evidence, to see what amount of weight 
they were to attach to it, the lecturer remarked that Drake's reputa- 
tion was, in fact, in jeopardy, and stood in need of rehabilitation. 
The long -missing, but now discovered, Eeceiver's Accounts were 
