payment of the duties above mentioned, and double on foreign vessels, ‘from and after the kindling or placing a light useful for shipping in the said lighthouse.’ In 1706 a lease of ninety-nine years was granted by the corporation of Trinity House to a Captain Lovet, who undertook the management of the affairs connected with the building. The choice Captain Lovet made of an engineer, or architect and surveyor, may seem a strange one. He deputed to that office John Rudyerd, a silk-mercer who kept a shop on Ludgate Hill. It does not appear that this Rudyerd had been bred to any scientific profession. On the contrary, it is reported that his parents and family were vagrants, and notorious for the badness of their characters; but that from something promising in the aspect of this boy, a gentleman took him into his service, and gave him instruction in reading, writing, accounts, and mathematics, in all which the boy made ready progress; so that his master was enabled to gratify his benevolent intention of advancing him in life, and recommending him to some employment above the rank of a servant. Thus was laid the foundation of his future success. No doubt Captain Lovet had become well assured of the genius of this man, ere he entrusted him with a work for which no previous experience had qualified him. At any rate, the choice was a wise one. Rudyerd’s designs proved admirable, and his want of personal experience was in a great degree supplied by the help of Messrs. Smith and Norcutt, shipwrights from Woolwich, who worked with him the whole time. Rudyerd saw the errors in Winstanley’s building, and avoided them: instead of a polygon, he chose a circle for the outline of his building, and carried up the elevation in that form. He studied use and simplicity instead of ornament; therefore he dispensed with the open gallery and other unnecessary appendages of the former building. After the completion of his work, Rudyerd published a print of his lighthouse, entitled ‘A Prospect and Section of the Lighthouse on the Edystone Rock off of Plymouth;’ with the motto, _Furit natura coercet ars_, dedicated to Thomas Earl of Pembroke, then Lord High Admiral.