Unlike the rest of such buildings erected in post-Reformation times, this lighthouse owed its existence to philanthropy—to a desire on the part of one who well knew the treachery of the coast, the long reefs of rocks (now near the surface, now far below it) that stretched seawards; one who lived within hearing of the breakers’ roar, and the cry of shipwrecked men and women, that so often rose above the howling of a winter’s gale. Many a time he, with such of his servants as were willing to turn out from home and battle with the wind and rain, had spent long hours in aiding as best they could the maimed and helpless victims washed ashore, and had tended to their wants beneath the shelter of his own roof. This heroic Cornish gentleman was Sir John Killegrew; early in the year 1619 he began to take active measures towards placing a lighthouse on the Lizard Point. He confided his project to a friend, Sir Dudley Carleton, the future Lord Dorchester, then English ambassador at the Hague, and it is likely enough that from him he first learned of the necessity of obtaining a royal charter for the good work he had in hand—that is to say, if he was to gather any toll towards its support. He was not a rich man, and so felt the necessity of doing this; for the expense of a nightly fire was quite beyond his means, though he was willing and able to bear the cost of the actual erection of a tower on which that fire was to burn. So he asked that, for the sum of ‘twenty nobles by the yeare,’ the king would allow him, entirely at his own cost, to erect a lighthouse at the Lizard, and, for a term of thirty years, collect from ships that passed the point such voluntary contribution as the owners, by their captains, might be disposed to offer. This, it will be said, was not a very exorbitant demand; nor indeed was it, but it touched a principle, and, as we shall see, one which in the end proved fatal to success. The Council considered the petition; then by the king’s command submitted it to the Trinity House for opinion! This opinion, in due course, was delivered. It began by giving our Scotch-born sovereign—who perhaps did not know much of so southerly a part of his dominions as Cornwall—quite a nice little geographical account of the Lizard; and it arrived at the conclusion that it was not ‘necessarie nor convenient on the Lizard to erect a light, but, _per contra_, inconvenient, both in regard of pirates, or foreign enemys; for the light would serve them as a pilot to conduct and lead them to safe places of landinge; the danger and perill whereof we leave to your majesty’s absolute and profound wisdom.’ Well-chosen words these—‘Absolute and profound wisdom!’ If anything was likely to win a favour from James I, it was an expression of admiration for the mental abilities which—be it said to his credit—he really believed he possessed.