Volume: v. 4 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1824 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: THE TRINITY HOUSE. It appears by a recent report of a Committee of the House of Commons, that although the society of the Trinity House was first incorporated by a royal charter of Henry VIII., dated the 20th of May, 1M4, yet, so early as the reign of King Henry VII. an association existed, consisting of shipmen and mariners, for the purpose of piloting ships and vessels belonging to the crown, as well as all descriptions of merchant ships; but what remuneration was received for that service, and in what manner it was disposed of, does not appear. The charter of Henry VIII. granted to the shipmen and mariners of the realm authority to erect and establish a guild or fraternity, as well of men as of women, in the parish-church of Deptford Strond, in the county of Kent, under the name and title of
the Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Guild or Fraternity of the most glorious and undivided Trinity. They were empowered to make laws and statutes among themselves, for the relief, increase, and augmentation of the shipping of England; to levy fines or subsidies on offenders – to acquire lands and tenements to a certain amount; to maintain a chaplain, and to do and perform other acts of piety, and to enjoy all the franchises and privileges shipmen and mariners of the realm have used and enjoyed. The charter of Henry VIII. was successively confirmed by Edward VI., Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth. The act of Elizabeth, which was passed in the eighth year of her reign, after confirming to the sopiety the general supervision of the buoys, beacons, and ballastage, enacts, that the Corpora…