THE EDDYSTONE I FACTS AND FICTIONS. 
199 
It has usually been supposed that the Trinity Corporation were 
themselves the builders of the first lighthouse at the Eddy stone, 
and that Mr. Winstanley was only the architect. This is a 
mistake ; for after obtaining from the Crown the power to levy 
dues to pay for the " costs and charges " of a lighthouse, nothing 
was done for nearly two years. Of the actual date of the com- 
mencement, by Mr. Winstanley, of his work, we have I believe 
no record beyond the fact that it was in the year 1696. Whether 
the Corporation were all this time looking about for a person to 
share with them the risks attending the proposed undertaking, 
it is certain that on the 10th June in that year, an agreement was 
signed between the Corporation and Mr. Walter Whitfeld, whereby 
the Trinity House leased to the said Mr. Whitfeld the whole of the 
dues arising by virtue of the Koyal Patent, for the term of five 
years from the time of the kindling of a light on the Eddystone, and 
a moiety of these dues for the subsequent term of fifty years. 
Bearing in mind that these dues had been granted to the Corpora- 
tion for ever; i.e., during the continuance of a light, it seems 
clear that they were making a very good bargain with Mr. Whit- 
feld, when they got his assent to erecting and maintaining a light- 
house on so dangerous a reef, in return for such a share of the 
income to arise from it. 
How Mr. Winstanley came to be selected as the director of the 
building is not actually known ; but one authority states that 
among the number of ships lost on the reef in the latter part 
of the seventeenth century, were two which were owned by Mr. 
Winstanley himself. 
I have not been able to verify this statement, but give it on the 
authority of the Rev. W. H. Lyon, Eector of Sherborne, who 
wrote on the subject prior to 1872, and informs me that he cannot, 
after this lapse of time, say exactly whence he derived it. If the 
statement be true, it is not to be wondered at that a man of his 
mechanical turn of mind, albeit displayed in so eccentric a manner 
at his house at Littlebury, should join with Mr. Whitfeld in trying 
to save the property of others from the fate that had befallen his own. 3 
I have said that there is no record of the particular part of the 
year 1696 when Mr. Winstanley commenced to build, but it 
3 Miss Jean Ingelow in her poem "The Noble Mercer," in Good Words, 
1864, adopted this supposition ; but her characterizing Winstanley as a 
mercer, which was Rudyerd's calling, prevents the acceptance of her poem as 
lending any historic sanction to the statement. 
