by the City to manage their cause; some of the principal Officers of the Navy, and certain Masters of the Trinity-House, to consult with them whether the erection of such Mills would be beneficial, or inconvenient; and to consider in what places they should be set up, in order that the Queen might be moved to grant the City’s petition. After this consultation, a certificate, dated May the 16th, was returned by all the parties summoned, and the eight Masters and Overseers of the River, and others of the Assistants of the Company of Watermen, that the erecting of such Mills could not in any way be hurtful to the Thames. But as Stow has left on record the Trinity-House Certificate, I shall give it you in the original form and words. “‘Whereas it hath pleased the Lords of Her Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council to direct their letter to the Worshipful Mr. Rookesby, Master of St. Katherine’s, Mr. Fanshaw, Mr. Osborn, Commissioners for the building of certain Mills on the South side of Thames upon the starlings above the Bridge: and the Commissioners above-named, have sent for us, the Master and Assistants of the Trinity-House of Deptford-Strand in Kent, that we should make the survey, whether the erecting of those Mills might be prejudicial, or hurtful, to the said River; We whose names are hereunder written, with others, have taken a view of the said place, and do find, as far as we can judge and foresee, it will not be hurtful, nor prejudicial, to the said River in any way. April 4th, 1588. John Hawkins. William Holstock. Richard Gibs, _Master._ _By me_, Edw. Wilkinson. _By me_, Will. Harris. _By me_, Peter Hills.’ _By me_, Tho. Andros. “In Stow’s same work and volume, page 62, he states, that as soon as these Mills were set up, complaint was made to the Court, which produced the foregoing enquiry; and that it was then ordered, that the water should have free course through the arches of the Bridge, and that the parts of the Mills which stood nearest to the stone-work of the edifice, should still be twelve feet distant from any part of it. The intent of these Mills was to provide a remedy for times of dearth, when the common people paid from 4_d._ to 6_d._ the bushel for grinding their corn, and often, for a considerable time, could not get it ground at all; to supply which they were constrained to buy meal at the meal-sellers’ own prices, which they increased at their pleasure. “We have no very perfect idea left us of the appearance of either the Mills, or the ancient Waterworks erected against London Bridge. Gough, in his ‘_British Topography_,’ volume i., page 735, states on the authority of Bagford, that in the Pepysian Library, at Cambridge, there is ‘a draught of London Bridge, expressing the Mill at the end;--as also a very old drawing of this Bridge on Fire, on vellum.’”