SIR FRANCIS DRAKE REHABILITATED AND MEMORIALISED. 77 
found in an eminently ragged and dishevelled condition in the 
lumber-room of the descendants of a former Mayor, and supplying 
as they did a lamentable hiatus in the Corporation Accounts about 
this critical period in Drake's history, he trusted they would even- 
tually be found to possess all the value now assigned to them, 
particularly since, as he had heard, but had not been able to verify 
by personal inspection, the ancient volume was to be rehabilitated 
as well as Drake. This was not as yet, however, the case with the 
volume. 
Inquiring whether the evidence adduced from the book now in- 
tended to be newly-vested was sufficient to carry the superstructure so 
laboriously raised upon it, he asked whether the non-appearance of 
certain entries were equivalent to the non-existence of certain events, 
and were they expected to accept the conclusions that the entries 
found were quite sufficient to account for all the expenses incurred 1 
If the latter were the case, how were they to explain the Corporation's 
statement to Cecil, that Sir Francis Drake had a large share in the 
cost of the water, as well as themselves? Was it a natural ex- 
planation to say that this simply referred to Drake's expenditure in 
building six mills on the leatl If, as the historian 1 of Ply- 
mouth says, the cost of all the land along the watercourse 
could not have exceeded £50 (the indenture of 1592 says more 
than £61), why it followed that the sites of the six mills must 
have cost little indeed, perhaps £1, perhaps £5 or £6. The 
Corporation would also, no doubt, give free use of the water-power 
to such an influential man as Drake. The entire cost of the mills 
was defrayed by Drake himself, in return for a sixty-seven years' 
lease, after which they became, by his gift, the absolute property 
of the town. It had been denied that Drake or his heirs paid any 
rent for the leat mills, except some four guineas for ground-rent of 
some land in connection with the Sourpool Mills, for which the Cor- 
poration had themselves to pay 43s. 4d. for site of Middle Mill. 
From a recently-discovered indenture of the Corporation, dated more 
than thirty years after Drake's death, April 25th, 1634, in which 
it was stated that various mills within the borough, the leat and 
watercourse, and several closes and pieces of land, were let to Sir 
Francis Drake, deceased, and heirs, for divers years yet to come, 
and should not, on expiration of the lease, be let under £150 a 
year, it might be gathered that Drake did pay some rent. 
1 Plym, Inst. Trans. 1881, p. 470. 
