between 15 and 16 years of age, whose name was Thomas Chatterton, and
whose family had been sextons of Redclift church for near 150 years.
His father, who was now dead, had also been master of the free-school
in Pile-street. The young man was at first very unwilling to discover
from whence he had the original; but, after many promises made to him,
he was at last prevailed on to acknowledge, that he had received this,
_together with many other MSS_, from his father, who had found them
in a large chest in an upper room over the chapel on the north side of
Redclift church."

Soon after this Mr. Catcott commenced his acquaintance with young
Chatterton[1], and, partly as presents partly as purchases, procured
from him copies of many of his MSS. in in prose and verse. Other
copies were disposed of, in the same way, to Mr. William Barrett, an
eminent surgeon at Bristol, who has long been engaged in writing
the history of that city. Mr. Barrett also procured from him several
fragments, some of a considerable length, written upon vellum[2],
which he asserted to be part of his original MSS. In short, in the
space of about eighteen months, from October 1768 to April 1770,
besides the Poems now published, he produced as many compositions,
in prose and verse, under the names of Rowley, Canynge, &c. as would
nearly fill such another volume.

In April 1770 Chatterton went to London, and died there in the August
following; so that the whole history of this very extraordinary
transaction cannot now probably be known with any certainty. Whatever
may have been his part in it; whether he was the author, or only
the copier (as he constantly asserted) of all these productions; he
appears to have kept the secret entirely to himself, and not to have
put it in the power of any other person, to bear certain testimony