SOME RECENT REVISIONS OF PLYMOUTH HISTORY. 377 
ings in Parliament in relation to this second Haven Bill. But it 
seems now to be clearly made out that this second Haven Bill never 
reached a third reading, though it does seem strange that a draft of 
the Bill should be found in the records of the House of Lords. 
The date of the opening of the eighth Parliament of Elizabeth 
now appears, from the Parliamentary Blue Book on Parliaments, 
to have been 19th February, 1592-3, a fact which negatives the 
possibility of any Bill having passed through a second reading on 
that day. The date of the second reading of the Bill is fixed in 
D'Ewe's Journal as the 26th March, 1592-3, instead of 29th 
February, 1592-3, and after this date, the 26th March, no further 
mention of any progress with the Bill occurs, with the exception 
of a fuller Committee being appointed on 29th March, when the 
Bill was perhaps quashed in Committee. 
Hence the conclusion is obvious, as the House of Lords Eecord 
appears to have escaped the fate which befell the House of Com- 
mons Records in the fire of 1666 — the celebrated fire of London. 
From some cause or other the Bill of 1592 must have been quashed, 
probably in Committee; and when we consider the relation in which 
Drake stood to the Corporation Mills, built by him, and rented 
from them, we can be at no loss to gather who it was that gave the 
Mills Removal Bill "the happy despatch," which "removed" it 
from the category of the disturbers of the peace of the Plymouth 
Corporation. It was, I hold, Drake who did the deed, and as we 
cannot look up on him as a time server, destructive of his own 
interests, it follows that to him the Corporation were indebted for 
the defeat of the last attack made upon them in Parliament. And 
this conclusion is amply confirmed by the fact that after Drake's 
death Crymes, who availed himself, in 1602, of the opportunity to 
encroach upon the Plymouth Water Rights, was, as appears from 
the notable compositon of 1604, able to secure a forty years' lease 
of the water supply required for the working of his New Mills, 
and this for the nominal rent and consideration of only one shilling 
per annum. Need I say more as to the way in which the influence 
of Drake was directed 1 
