--Rates of Dues--How
collected and disbursed--Constitution of the
Corporation--The Public Lights of England.

It will now be necessary to give some account of the important
institution to whose members is entrusted the management of
Lighthouses, and of various interests connected with the Seamen and
Shipping of this country. This is the Corporation of the Trinity House
of Deptford Strond, whose full title is as follows:--'The Master,
Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild, Fraternity, or Brotherhood of
the most glorious and undivided Trinity, and of St. Clement, in the
parish of Deptford Strond, in the county of Kent.'

The early records of this corporation were destroyed by fire in 1714,
so that the origin of the institution cannot be precisely stated. But
it appears that the purpose for which it was first established was,
for the increase of correct information of the intricacies of
navigation connected with the channels leading into the Thames, and
with the river itself, and that the society was originally an
association of seamen formed for the purpose of forwarding and
assisting the attainment of the object.

In the reign of Henry VIII. the arsenals of Woolwich and Deptford were
founded, the latter being afterwards put under the direction of the
Trinity House. It is in this reign that we meet with the first
official document relating to the establishment at Deptford Strond. A
royal charter of incorporation was granted in the sixth year of the
reign, wherein Henry grants license to his beloved people and
subjects, the shipmen and mariners of England, to _new begin_, erect,
create, ordain, found, unite, and establish a certain guild or
perpetual fraternity of themselves and other persons, as well men as
women, in the parish-church of Deptford Strond, in the county of Kent.
This charter permits the brethren to elect one master, four wardens,
and eight assistants, to govern and oversee the guild, and have the
custody of the lands and possessions thereof, &c. Queen Elizabeth, in
the first year of her reign, recognised all the rights and immunities
of the corporation, and in the eighth of her reign an act was passed
enabling them to preserve ancient sea-marks, to erect beacons, marks,
and signs for the sea, and to grant licenses to mariners during the
intervals of their engagements to ply for hire as watermen on the
river Thames. This act recites the destruction of steeples, woods, and
other marks on the co