THE EARLY COMMERCE OF PLYMOUTH. 321 
and thence the case went to the superior courts. It was a very 
pretty quarrel. Lanyon and certain other merchants declared that 
the quays claimed by Jennens and Warren were really Hawkins’s 
Quay, at which, time out of mind, goods had been freely laden 
and unladen, without charge to the freemen of the town, and to 
the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns and villages; that 
Jennens and Warren having got hold of Sir Richard Hawkins’s 
deeds, in the course of the law-suit with Arundel, were keeping 
them back, whereas they would show the true rights of the pro- 
perty; and that Jennens, being “a powerful man,” had forced 
some people to pay dues, and had “ persuaded” others. The mayor 
and Corporation, on their part, contended that the quays were 
theirs, included under the term “ New Quay,” and built on part of 
the waste of their manor of Sutton Prior. It had been a very 
“old and ruinated quay,” and they had repaired and “ beautified ” 
it, making it much more commodious. Moreover, by their -quay- 
masters they had regularly collected the petty customs there (these 
customs included, by the way, a faggot or billet of wood for the 
old almshouses from every boat so laden) ; and the fact that different 
parts of the quays were called by the names of different people 
did not make them their property. The quays were only so called, 
for “distinction and difference sake,” after people whose places of 
business adjoined. 
Jennens and Warren, thus assailed from two different quarters, 
charged their opponents with being in league, and insisted on the 
rights of private property against the custom of Lanyon and the 
manorial and corporate privileges of the town. They challenged 
the Corporation to show that the New Quay was built before 1576 
or 1577, and denied that Hawkins’s Quay or Custom House Quay 
(which was another name for that held by Warren) were any part 
of the New Quay at all—referring, moreover, to the town writings 
or records being burnt about seventy years previously. What 
was the end of this business I cannot exactly say ; but whatever 
Jennens and Warren may have retained, there still remained town 
quays, which in 1693 underwent considerable repairs; while in 
1730-1, when they wanted reparation again, 161 dozen of timber 
wedges were driven, at the town cost, between the stones. A few 
years later there were negotiations between the town and Lord 
Arundel for the lease of Sutton Pool; and in 1684 he offered to 
assign the remainder of his term of seventeen years, and to obtain 
