Besides maintaining this nocturnal light, the petitioners undertook to constantly provide ‘a sufficient company of strong and experienced men, with vessels, always in a readiness to relieve such as by day, or night, through extremitie of weather, should unhappily be forced upon the sands’: presumably, then, more than one vessel was to be kept permanently moored at the Goodwins, each craft being provided with boats, and with such life-saving apparatus as was then known, so that assistance could at once be sent to any ill-fated ship that ran upon the Sands. In return for all this the petitioners craved leave to levy one penny from every English ship passing through the Downs and three-halfpence from every ‘foreigner,’ besides an allowance for salvage in respect to the cargo of any wrecked ship that the petitioners or their servants happened to rescue. The petition bears no endorsement, so that we cannot tell what was done upon it: the proposal as to the payment of dues probably defeated it, especially as lights, for which a tax had been demanded, had been established only a little before at the Forelands. These were, neither of them, very elaborate buildings, nor, we should fancy, efficient lights: each was built of timber and plaster, and had at its top a lantern in which were stuck a few candles. The Trinity House offered a most strenuous and relentless opposition to the Foreland lighthouses, which were set up by Sir John Meldrum, and felt bound to inform King Charles that there was ‘no necessity for such lights’ and that an imposition of a rate for their support would a grievance to navigation: in times of ‘hostility,’ the Trinity House went on, ‘such lights would be a means to light an enemy to land, and bring them to an anchor in the Downs’; and moreover, ‘in a chase by night’ ships would be brought to where the king’s ships and our own merchantmen rode peacefully at anchor, and then these pursuing vessels might, on dark nights, by mistake board either those frigates or merchant ships without either having time to demonstrate what she was. True, it might be urged that, ‘in time of hostility,’ the Foreland lights could be put out; yet, meanwhile, they would so far do mischief as to acquaint strangers with our coast in every part; so that in time of war they night get through the channel by night without lights ‘merely by their depths.’ The Trinity House at Dover had similar objections to such costly follies as lighthouses. ‘We at sea,’ it wrote, with professional contempt, ‘have always marks more certain and sure than lights—high lands and soundings which _we_ trust more than lights’; ‘and,’ continued these superior persons, ‘the Goodwins are no more dangerous now than time out of mind they were, and lighthouses would never lull tempests, the real cause of shipwreck.’ If lighthouses had been of any service at the Forelands, the Trinity House, as guardians of the interests of shipping, would surely have put them there!