Let us also, before we leave the subject of the Trinity House, say something further as to its history up to the time of the control of all lighthouses around the English coast being vested in it by Act of Parliament. In the angry days of the struggle between the King and Parliament, the board was loyal to the former, and paid its debt to the latter by being superseded in its authority by a committee. But with the restoration of Charles II came also a restoration of the ancient privileges of the Trinity House, which were watched over by General Monk as master. Other famous men presided over the corporation somewhat later; amongst them Samuel Pepys, in whose _Diary_ are many allusions to his work there. In the Restoration year the corporation moved from its former home to the more central one in which we now know it, near the Tower of London. Trinity Monday was that year kept in good style by a dinner for forty. But the corporation did not long enjoy the comforts of its new home; the flames of the fire of London licked round it, burnt the woodwork, and gutted it, destroying valuable pictures and also papers and parchments which would have drawn aside the veil that now shrouds the early history of the fraternity. It was not till August, 1670, that the house was built again; the rebuilding was no light matter, and in 1672 the corporation was £1,100 in debt, and some years elapsed ere that was wiped out. Meanwhile, every brother, elder or younger, seems to have behaved with a public spirit, foregoing any participation in the funds of the institution, leaving that for the poor and needy. A little after this, whilst Pepys was master of the Trinity House, the suggestion was put forward of a compulsory purchase by the board of all existing lighthouses. We will not speculate as to the object the brethren had in desiring this acquisition; it is sufficient to state that its policy towards lighthouse schemes in general was not one which could have given the public much confidence; the time had not yet come for the scheme proposed. But a little more than a century later the lighthouse policy of the Trinity House had entirely changed. The board no longer thwarted proposals for lighthouses and lightships in places needful; it was itself proposing them and helping, with its powerful hand, the sailor to fight for his rights in demanding that, for the dues he paid, the private owner should show a good and a steady light, and was furthering every project put forth by men of science for improving the power and intensity of lighthouse luminants. The result was inevitable. Sailors, merchants, the people at large, began to look upon the corporation as every one looks upon it to-day—as a public-spirited institution, labouring its hardest in the interests of navigation. So it came about that in the year 1836 privately maintained lights were altogether extinguished, and the entire control of our lighthouse system handed over to the corporation that now directs it.