SIR FRANCIS DRAKE AND THE PLYMOUTH CORPORATION. 489 
_ This again does not go beyond “bringing in the water;” and 
the only further remark called for is that the portrait was placed 
in the then new Guildhall just twenty-one years after Drake’s 
death. 
1616-17 Itm pd for drawinge of St Frances Drakes 
picture and other charges towards that . lij 
At the same time the arms of Sir John Hawkins and Sir John Hele 
were placed in the Guildhall windows at a cost of 33s. 6d., exclu- 
sive of a ‘‘grate of wyre before the armes,” which cost 13s. 10d. 
The king’s arms were’ also gilt and the Guildhall painted at a cost 
of £3 7s. In the next year the king’s arms were “amended,” and 
the prince’s and duke’s [ Buckingham] added. 
Lastly, in this connection, we have to consider what contemporary 
or quasi-contemporary evidence is offered by the remains of the 
Old Town Conduit, built into the wall of the reservoirs in the 
Tavistock Road. Those remains consist of two inscriptions, one 
in granite and the other in limestone; and sundry armorial 
bearings. The one inscription, that in granite, reads 
Made in the maioraltie of Iohn Trelawnie, 1598. 
The other on a limestone tablet, runs 
S' Francis Drake first brovght the water into Plymouth in 
1591. This condit was rebvilt in the maioralty of William Cotton, 
merchant, 1671. 
The reference to Drake, which again stops at “ bringing in the 
water,” is thus, not of the date of the original Conduit, but of its 
successor, and instead of being contemporary is 80 years later. 
But what of the Drake arms thereon? They are those of Drake, 
not as borne by himself,* but by his brother Thomas, the fesse and 
pole stars. Does not, it has been asked, and naturally,—the 
appearance of the Drake arms on the Conduit indicate a special 
indebtedness to him? Undoubtedly this might be a fair assumption 
if they were contemporary ; but they are not. Drake was never 
recognised on the original Conduit, and the recognition of 1671 is 
due not to current fact but to developing tradition. I do not rely 
* See his seal in the Plymouth Records—the original wyvern quarterly 
with the augmentation of Elizabeth. 
