In the year 1558 appeared “Sparks of Friendship,” a book by Thomas Churchyard, who was born in 1520 and died in 1604, and who bore the title of “Nestor of the Elizabethan era.” This book mentions the paper-mill of Spillman. A poem in a work entitled “Progress of Queen Elizabeth,” in 1565, has the title, “A Description and Playne Discourse of Paper and the whole Benefits that Paper Brings, with Rehearsal and Setting forth in verse a Paper-myll Built near Darthforth, by a High Germaine, called Master Spillman, Jeweler to the Queen’s Majestie.” This is often said to have been the first mill in England, but if the quotation with regard to John Tate is intended to imply that the paper was made by him in England, then certainly there must have been a paper-mill in operation in that country nearly a hundred years before, and this, taking the entry of King Henry VII. as proof of an English mill, must have been the second, if not the third, of its kind. It is said that Spielman, or Spillman, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth as a fitting honor and reward for the noble work of having built a paper-mill at Dartford, England, in 1588. A lease recorded in the Land Revenue Records of England, in 1591, reads, “Penlifton Co., Cambridge, lease of water, called paper-mills, late of Bishopric of Ely to John George, dated 14th. July, 34th. Elizabeth,” which would seem to indicate a third or fourth mill in 1592. In 1649 watermark of the finest English paper (whether made in England or not) bore the royal arms, but later on, in contempt of Charles I., a fool with cap and bells was substituted for the king’s arms.