THE EARLY COMMERCE OF PLYMOUTH. 307 
not duly observed and kept; for in 1600 the Grand Jury com- 
plained that by continual bringing of stones, sand, and other 
things to the quays the Pool was injured. So it was ordered that 
every lighter should each year carry away a lighter of “ose, 
robbell, or filth,” until the Pool should be sufficiently cleared. 
But the Corporation had a much fuller notion of their powers 
than such regulations imply. You have already heard how they 
set themselves to prescribe the conduct of trade. They also turned 
their attention to the due regulation of commerce. In all things 
their idea of the common weal was to be supreme, and individual 
rights counted for little or nothing. It is not easy to see what 
scope they left for private enterprise; but I suppose there were 
ways and means of evasion. 
In “1564 it was ordered that no resident should buy any meal 
brought to the town, on pain of forfeiture and other punishment. 
This was to compel the inhabitants to have their corn ground at 
the town mills, which formed one of the chief sources of the town 
income, and at this time yielded £24 a year rent. These were the 
mills at Millbay. One wonders whence the windmill on the Hoe 
got its business. In 1570 it was directed further that no one was 
to grind any corn away from the mills, on pain of forfeiting three 
times the just toll per bushel ; and the millers who did wrong were 
likewise to restore threefold. And three years afterwards we light 
upon a record of the most distinguished miller Plymouth ever had 
before the time of Sir Francis Drake—no less a person than Sir 
John Hawkins, who, with his brother William, rented the town 
mills; bought a house at ‘ Pope’s Head” to weigh the corn in 
before it was carried to the mills; and kept a man with a horse 
ready, on due warning, to fetch the corn from the houses of the 
inhabitants, which no doubt the said inhabitants found mightily 
convenient. 
It is curious too that in 1580 we find mention of a prototype of 
the Royal Hotel—the Town Tavern—in respect of which Walter 
Battishill, Humphrey Fownes, and Christopher Seeley agreed to 
pay yearly £3 6s. 8d. at the winewits audit. 
As to general merchandise, in 1575 it was enacted that all goods 
brought by sea should be put, before purchase, into the common 
hall, “‘ the large Seller adjoyninge the Crane Kaye,” under penalty 
of £5, Three years later, John Sparke (mayor in 1583-4) pro- 
vided a sufficient cellar for receiving strangers’ goods, being 
