224 THE WEDGWOODS. 



family but ill provided for, in 1718. Thus young Cook- 

 worthy, at the age of thirteen, and with six younger brothers 

 and sisters for he was the eldest of the family of seven 

 was left fatherless. His mether entered upon her heavy 

 task of providing for and maintaining her large family with 

 true courage, and appears to have succeeded in working out 

 a good position for them all. She betook herself to dress- 

 making, and as her little daughters grew old enough to 

 handle the needle, they were taught to aid her, and thus she 

 maintained them in comparative comfort. In the following 

 spring, at the age of fourteen, young Cookworthy was 

 apprenticed to a chemist in London, named Bevans ; but 

 his mother's means being too scanty to admit of his being 

 sent to the metropolis in any other way, he was compelled 

 to walk there on foot. This task, no light one in those days, 

 a hundred and fifty years ago, or now, for a boy of fourteen, 

 he successfully accomplished. 



His apprenticeship he appears to have passed with extreme 

 credit, and on its termination returned into Devonshire, not 

 only with the good opinion, but with the co-operation ot 

 his late master, and commenced business in Nutt-street, 

 Plymouth, as wholesale chemist and druggist, under the 

 name of Bevans and Cookworthy. Here he gradually 

 worked his way forward, and became one of the little 

 knot of intelligent men who in those days met regularly 

 together at each other's houses, of whom Cookworthy, Dr. 

 Huxham, Dr. Mudge, and the elder Northcote were amongst 

 the most celebrated. Here he brought his mother to 

 live under his roof, and she became by her excellent and 

 charitable character a general favourite among the leading 

 people of the place-, and was looked up to with great respect 

 by the lower classes whom she benefited. In 1735 Cook- 

 worthy married a young Quaker lady of Somersetshire, named 

 Berry. This lady, to whom he seems to have been most 

 deeply attached, lived only ten years after their marriage, 

 and left him with five little daughters, and Cookworthy 

 remained a widower for the remaining thirty-five years of 

 his life. 



