2°d S. NO 83., Aug. 1. '37.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



93 



having been placed therein by the permission of 

 Mrs. Chatterton. The whole of this statement I 

 believe to have been made without the slightest 

 foundation in truth. Mr. Cumberland was not 

 sufficiently careful in examining the veracity of 

 the evidence which he procured. Mr. Masson, in 

 his Essay on Chatterton, lately published, states 

 that from information received by Mr. Cumber- 

 land in Bristol, the money produced by the sale of 

 Chatterton's Worhs came, after her mother's death, 

 to Miss Newton ; this girl, he says, who had been 

 in the service of Miss Hannah More, left lOOl. to a 

 young man, an attorney, to whom she was about 

 to be married. Miss Newton became known to 

 me about one year after her mother's death ; she 

 told me that soon after that event Miss Hannah 

 More had invited her to spend a few weeks at her 

 residence, Barleywood, near Wrington. She was 

 there during this short time as a visitor, and not 

 as a servant. 



" I am the person referred to as ' the young 

 man, an attorney.' I neither am nor was an at- 

 torney, but was employed at that time, and be- 

 tween nine and ten years previously, in the same 

 business, and in the same premises, in which I am 

 now engaged." 



Query. " What account did Chatterton give to 

 his sister, Mrs. Newton, as to the manuscripts 

 said to have been found by him, and the use he 

 made of them ? And what did Chatterton's mo- 

 ther do with his papers on hearing of his untimely 

 death ? " 



Answer. " The account which Miss Newton 

 gave me of the works ascribed to Rowley was, 

 that Chatterton had told her mother that he had 

 found the subject, and had versified it. She also 

 told me that on the arrival of the news of 

 Chatterton's death, her mother said that Mrs. 

 Chatterton had become so distressed, that she 

 burnt lapsfull of his papers, in order to remove 

 what might bring him to her remembrance." 



The above is a verbatim copy of the answers 

 given in writing to my inquiries, and of which I 

 intended to make use through another channel ; 

 but the publicity given to the subject through 

 " N. & Q.," induces me to forward the above for 

 publication through the columns of that periodical. 

 The writer of the replies is a highly respectable 

 manufacturer in this city ; having many years ago 

 succeeded to the business in which he was engaged 

 when acquainted with Chatterton's niece. My 

 reason for concealing his name is because I feel it 

 would be an act of unkindness in me to mention it 

 here, as in all probability he would be inundated 

 with letters from the merely inquisitive, which, at 

 his advanced age, would be a source of great an- 

 noyance to him. To any gentleman, however, 

 who desires to know his name and address for 

 purposes of authorship, I should feel myself justi- 

 fied in disclosing it, by private communication, on 



his assuring me that for that purpose alone he 

 requests it. Geohgb Pkycb. 



City Library, Bristol. 



P.S. Your correspondent Bristomensis, who is 

 unknown to me by that signature, says that Chat- 

 terton " materially added to his (Barrett's) stock 

 0? Antiquities of Bristol,^* If Bristoliensis had 

 said that the poor youth by his additions to Bar- 

 rett's stock of Antiquities of Bristol had made it 

 one of the most useless local histories in Great 

 Britain, he would not have been very far from the 

 truth. 



I most heartily concur with Mr. Gutch, in his 

 letter in your late number (2"*^ S. iv. 23.), on the 

 removal of Chatterton's body. The story is ab- 

 surd. When I visited the Shoe Lane Burial- 

 ground, sixty-five years ago, the sexton showed 

 me quite acquiescently the part of the ground 

 where his body was interred with others in a pit, 

 and his sister, whom I called upon at Bristol, 

 heard my account of my attention without any 

 hint of any removal, but was pleased with my ac- 

 count. Her eyes were fine grey eyes, which an 

 admirer would call " blue." 1 thank Mr. Gutch 

 for the trouble which he has taken relative to the 

 absurd story. C. Val. Le Grice. 



Trereife. 



I was not sorry to see the Reply of Bris- 

 TOLiENSis to my reasons for believing that Chat- 

 terton's body was not removed from Shoe Lane 

 burial-ground to Bristol. The subject has, I 

 think, been fairly and temperately stated on both 

 sides ; I therefore leave the verdict to the de- 

 cision of a discerning public. J. M. G. 



Worcester. 



With respect to the discussion that has been 

 going on in your pages for some time past, touch- 

 ing the burial-place of the boy-poet Chatterton, 

 the following extract, taken from The Churches of 

 London, by George Godwin, vol. ii., may pro- 

 bably set the matter at rest. He was interred ift 

 the burial-ground of Shoe Lane Workhouse. 



" In the register of burials under the date, August the 

 28th, 1770, appears the following entry : ' William Chat- 

 terton, Brooke Street,' to which has been added, probably 

 by an after incumbent, ' The Poet,' signed • J. Mill.' The 

 addition is perfectly correct, notwithstanding that his 

 Christian name was Thomas, not William; and this 

 slight memorial is the only record in the church of the 

 burial of one of the most wonderfully gifted boys (for he 

 was not eighteen years old when he died) that he world 

 has ever known." — St. Andrew's, Holbom, p. 10. 



Mr. Godwin adds, by way of note on the mis- 

 quoted Christian name, that — 



" All entries of this kind are now made at once from the 

 dictation of the family. At tliat time nam^s and dates 



