Leaving the Smalls, we pass on to the coast of North Wales, where a lighthouse was proposed early in the reign of Charles II. There is amongst the State Papers of that reign a petition, dated in June, 1665, to erect ‘a double lighthouse,’ _i.e._ a high light and a low light, at Holyhead; but there is no record of this petition being granted, or of any lighthouse being then established there. Legend tells us that the ancients had a pharos at this point, but within historic times the headland was unlit until, comparatively speaking, recently. Seven miles NNE. of Holyhead lie the Skerries, and the dangers, the treachery, of this far-stretching shoal attracted the attention of the lighthouse builder at a very much earlier date than the erection of the lighthouse at Holyhead; indeed, we first hear of lighting the Skerries in a scheme brought before Cromwell’s Council of State in 1658, for rendering possible the nocturnal navigation of St. George’s Channel. The scheme emanated from a certain Henry Hascard, who spoke from experience of the need of what he proposed, as he had been ‘for long employed in the Irish trade.’ The Council admitted the necessity of the scheme, but nothing appears to have been done to carry it into effect. Again, in 1662, a lighthouse on the Skerries was proposed independently; but the difficulties of the undertaking and the opposition of Trinity House crushed the proposal. Then, thirty years later—after the Eddystone lighthouse had been set up—the proposal was renewed; but the Trinity House still opposed the suggestion, though it offered itself to erect a lighthouse on the Skerries if the ‘Irish trade’ would give a definite promise of contributing. This the traders would not do, and the scheme was not finally carried through till the year 1714, when a wealthy and enterprising merchant named Trench, who was the leaseholder of the islands, built a lighthouse there at a cost of fully £3,000, saying that the thing was needful, and that he would take the risk of loss. Poor man, it was a bad speculation for him: his son lost his life in its construction, the traders managed in different ways to evade the payment of the lighthouse dues which his patent authorized, and ten years later he went to his grave a ruined man. After his death, the patent passed to a married daughter, whose husband tried in vain to get enough toll to support his light, and then sold the rights for a mere song. But the purchase was a fortunate one for the purchaser, or for his descendants or assigns; increase in traffic to Ireland, and a better machinery for gathering the lighthouse dues, turned the Skerries light into a very profitable possession: and one cannot read of the vast sum of £445,000, paid by the Trinity House to the owners in 1835, without a sigh of regret for the ill-luck of the original builder of the lighthouse.