THE EARLY COMMERCE OF PLYMOUTH. 331 
seems to have belonged—was ducked at the Barbican, and that he 
by no means begrudged the five shillings which the said ducking 
cost. And if either had a turn for art criticism, he certainly did 
not lack opportunity for exercising it. I hope Voysey and his 
customers duly appreciated John Lanyon’s arms, painted by Wil- 
liam Pearse for the New Exchange at a cost of £1 15s.; and that 
the portraits of Charles II., the Duke of York, and the Earl of 
Bath, placed in the Guildhall in 1684 at the cost of £16 2s., met 
with the approval of friend Addams and his clients. Judging by 
the portrait of Charles, I think they were cheap at the price. A 
dozen years later too Plymouth could boast a ‘‘lymner” of its own, 
Mr. John Hellier, who for drawing William III. “his picture at 
large,” with a gilt frame, and repairing other pictures in the Guild- 
hall, had £14. An extortionate price by comparison this must 
have seemed to such persistent shavers, though they may have 
been reconciled to the outlay by the reflection that it was encou- 
raging native talent. Certainly Hellier was more expensive than 
Nathaniel Northcot, jun., who had £6 8s. in 1703 for the portrait 
of Queen Anne, gilt frame and varnishing other pictures included. 
Hellier was not above painting the guildhall and council chamber 
when they required it; nor did he refuse in 1715 to depict the 
town arms and trophies on the drum of the Town Militia. 
And still assuming that we are doing our barber friends no 
injustice in regarding them as the Plymouth newsmen of these 
days, we may speculate whether they saw planted here the art and 
mystery that was to supersede this immemorial feature of their craft. 
Browne Willis says that Plymouth contained, circa 1715, two 
printing offices which subsisted ‘“‘chiefly by publishing news papers.” 
In September, 1721, Mr. E. Kent, of “Southside Street, near the 
New Key, where advertisements are taken in, and all other business 
relating to printing done as well and as cheap as in London or in 
_ any other place,” started the Plymouth Weekly Journal or General 
Post. It died two years later; and was certainly not patronized 
in the way of advertisements by the Corporation. ‘The first money 
the corporate body of Plymouth spent in printing, was in 1731-2, 
when they paid 18s. “for advertising the survey in the prints for 
setting the water-cocks.” And two years later we find, “paid Mr. 
Smithurst and Mr. Jordain, for stamps, paper, and printing the 
water leases (the printing whereof 40s.), £15 9s. 6d. It was 
D{aniel] Jourdaine who, in 1696, set up the first printing press in 
