But these inroads of the sea, these changes in the form of the coast-line, made the entrance to the Humber no safer. In Elizabeth’s days the Spurn was an exceedingly sharp headland, stretching far into the river, and collecting around it a quantity of shifting sand and shingle, so that the sailors of Hull determined to petition the queen in favour of a lighthouse there which one or their own countrymen—the famous navigator, Sir Martin Frobisher—was seeking leave to erect at the Spurn Point, or hard by it. No doubt Sir Martin’s suit was opposed in the usual quarter, and before he could ride down the opposition he had been carried off by wounds from the Frenchmen’s guns, and nothing came of his proposal. After this, in 1618, his kinsman, Peter Frobisher, put forward the same suggestion, but it was again laughed at as a madman’s scheme, and opposed and finally ‘shelved,’ so that ships got in and out of the Humber as best they could, the traders preferring risk to a settled tax. The next proposals we hear of for a lighthouse at the Spurn came in the days of the Commonwealth; Sir Harry Vane—from whom the Lord Protector had not yet been delivered—submitted them to the committee for managing the affairs of the Trinity House[2], which committee actually approved the scheme. But the Trinity House of Hull, constituted as before, liked it not at all: a lighthouse at the Spurn, if erected, would not stand ‘three springs,’ and the only persons it could benefit would be an enemy seeking to enter the Humber by night; no native ship would do so mad a thing as that for fifty lighthouses. These arguments are obviously weak, but somehow they managed to have the desired effect, and a lighthouse at the Spurn was once more postponed till some years after the Restoration. Then a private individual, a certain Justinian Angel, built one, lit it, and applied to the king for leave to gather toll for its support. The opponents of the scheme now raved in vain: there was the light, and with it ships _did_ come in and out of the Humber by night, and shipwreck grew to be the exception. Charles II gave Angel his patent, remarking to Sam Pepys, then Master of the Trinity House, that as the patentee only asked for a _voluntary_ contribution, it could be no hardship to anybody. Sam thought it wise to explain that, in so long opposing the scheme, the Trinity House had only done what it deemed its duty, to which the merry monarch replied that ‘caution’ was ‘always reasonable,’ and with that safe remark passed on. There was nothing for it now but to influence as much as possible such shipowners as were willing to pay, against the light. The Trinity House seems to have thought the best way to do this was to circulate wild rumours of Angel’s huge profits; we are glad now that these rumours were set afloat, for they drew from Angel a statement as to his expenses and management, which gives us a very vivid picture of his lighthouse; this is what he says:—