1685
New rule for admitting Younger Brethren of Trinity House
Trinity House Court Minute:
“The Master letting the Board know the Scandal this house lay under in their having admitted heretofore Younger Brothers being Dissenters from ye Church & ill affected to ye Government, it was debated how the evill should be prevented hereafter, and Resolved, that no late or any other Younger Brother to be made hereafter being a Seaman and expecting a Branch from this House shall be admitted into this Corporation, without bringing a certificate from ye Minister & Church Wardens of ye Parish to which he belongs of his conformity to ye Church of England as by Law established & of his frequenting the same.”
The ‘Scandal’ would appear to be fallout from the enormous changes brought about by the Civil War, Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth and the subsequent Restoration.
The ‘branch’ referred to is the certificate issued to Younger Brethren by Trinity House.
1736
Trinity House establishes the Gunfleet Beacon
Gunfleet Lighthouse drawing copyright Trinity House
Trinity House Board Minute:
“Mr. Baker (buoy keeper at Harwich) to attend on 7 July to go down with the Gunfleet Beacon, and in the meantime to lay a buoy near the place where the Beacon is to be set, and that it may stand dry at Low Water if possible. He is also to clean the buoys on his passage up. The Board is informed that the buoys at the Spitts lie too far to the westwards, and he is to observe them, and if he finds them so, to put them in a proper place.”
A buoy was first laid at the Gunfleet sand in the northern Thames Estuary in 1629. A lighthouse (pictured here) was established to mark the position in 1850, until it was discontinued in 1920. Today the area is marked with a number of buoys.
Trinity House History 