Reading’s lighthouse patent is striking because it joined a maritime service to private profit and royal authority during wartime. The six lights promised safer approaches to major ports, yet their maintenance depended on shipping dues and construction beyond the 1665 authorisation. This arrangement suggests that improving navigation was not a technical advance, but part of a Restoration effort to regulate commerce, strengthen centres, and project power along the coast. How should we interpret Reading’s scheme: chiefly as commercial infrastructure, as a wartime measure, or as an example of how public benefit and privileged enterprise became closely intertwined in Restoration Ireland?