486 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Both accounts are connected ; and one must have been partly copied 
from the other. Risdon and Westcote were contemporary ;* but 
Risdon, though the younger man of the two, appears to have been 
the first in the topographical field, and Westcote indeed acknow- 
ledges the value of his work. Westcote’s narrative in fact has all 
the signs of amplification both in fact and fiction, and illustrates 
the early development of the Drake myth, of which the only trace 
in Risdon is the ‘main rock.” But even Westcote, if we take his 
self-contradictions into account, carries the Drake case no further ; 
for we read that it was “by a composition made with the magis- 
tracy he brought in this fair stream of fresh water.” 
Lastly, we are referred to Fuller, who, though not in strictness 
contemporary, is so claimed on the score of his having had com- 
munication with Henry Drake. Fuller in the Holy State says of 
Sir Francis that he hated 
Nothing so much as idleness: And therefore lest his soul should 
rust in peace at spare hours he brought fresh water to Plymouth. 
These, then, are all the printed authorities that have any claim 
to be regarded as contemporary. Neither Fitz-Geffrey nor Fuller 
go beyond Drake’s “bringing” the water in ; and Westcote, who 
seems to do so, but upon points of detail is proved thoroughly 
untrustworthy (even without the criterion of the Official Records), 
dates the work back to the composition or contract which was 
in truth the basis of Sir Francis’s connection with the under- 
taking. 
But there is yet other contemporary testimony ; and the earliest 
and most important is a Jetter written in 1601 by the Mayor and 
his brethren to Robert Cecil asking his aid against Crymes. The 
reason why they wrote to Cecil is also important, as bearing upon 
the suggestion that the town may have been largely indebted to 
Drake for his influence at Court. Cecil was a man of far more 
constant and weighty influence there than Drake, and Cecil was 
the Lord High Steward of the town. We cannot trace the exact 
date of his appointment, but he was the first Lord High Steward 
who had a salary—£10—and this commenced in 1597-8. His 
* Risdon was born in 1580; Westcote in 1567. Westcote died somewhere 
about 1633 probably ; Risdon in 1640. 
