The real objection to the Foreland lights—their dimness and general badness—was never once mentioned; the outcry against the lighthouses was by those who had to pay for them, the shipowners and merchants; and from their point of view good lights or bad were equally objectionable. Probably the king—who must have been getting quite used to these extraordinary outbursts of eloquence every time a lighthouse was proposed _anywhere_, and who was beginning to have a shrewd suspicion as to the motives that caused them—knew how much of this expressed alarm was genuine. He stayed, for a little time, Sir John Meldrum’s patent, empowering him to gather tolls for the Foreland lighthouses, and then granted it, ordering his Admiral of the Narrow Seas to arrest vessels that would not pay. We do not know if Sir John Meldrum, after this confirmation, improved his system of lighting; let us hope he did; but it is doubtful, for the same ramshackle towers, well patched with timber and iron, were not replaced with more substantial structures for more than sixty years afterwards. A new tower, of flint and lime, was set up at the North Foreland in 1694, and then a coal fire was used to light the lighthouse. This was soon after completely gutted by fire, and for a long time the only light shown there was a lantern, containing one candle, stuck on a pole! After a while a tower of brick and stone was raised, and it is probable that some part of this forms the lighthouse we see at the North Foreland to-day; then the owners went back to their coal fire again, and kept it up so badly that bitter complaints arose from those who worked the Channel trade. Inquiry was held, and it was found that the grates were but half filled with fuel. This was scandalous, for the profits of the two Foreland lights had grown—I am speaking of the opening years of the last century—to be enormous. The Trinity House thought the outcry offered a reasonable pretext for acquiring possession of the lights, but the crown officers would not transfer the patent; they only warned the patentee to amend his light, and he did so. Then, in 1727, the Trustees of Greenwich Hospital bought both lighthouses, and possession of them remained in that charity till the general transfer of lighthouses to the Trinity House, some sixty years ago. One of the first things the trustees did was to close in the open coal fire at the North Foreland, and so save their coals. The plan succeeded no better there than at other lighthouses at which it was tried: shipwreck on the Goodwins became much more frequent, and sailors said that often they could see the outline of the Foreland before they got a glimpse of the fire on the lighthouse; and so the lantern was taken off and the fire was left to burn unshaded till 1790, when the tower was raised one hundred feet, to its present height, and a lantern lit with oil lamps supplanted the coal fire altogether.