CHAP. VII. child-poet, and appears to have been cherished by him to the last as an ideal reality. But it inevitably tended to become a deception, with more or less of sheer falsehood, when maintained with the help of spurious manuscripts and fictitious details of the literary treasures purloined from Canynge's coffer. Nevertheless the striking contrast between the transparent veil of fiction which his mother and sister were allowed to look through, and the impenetrable mystery which was opposed to the searching eye of strangers, must not be overlooked in judging of his conduct in this false position.

Bristol sophistries

seen

through.

Comprehensive literary scheme.

As Chatterton awoke from the dreams of childhood, his keen eye pierced through the sophistries and conventional disguises of that Bristol of the eighteenth century in which his lot was cast; and he very clearly perceived that to unmask his "Rowley" to its Barretts, Catcotts, Thistlethwaites, and Smiths, was simply to expose himself to insult and contempt. Incapable of appreciating the true poetry of his song to "Ella, Lorde of the Castel of Brystowe ynn daies of Yore:" they could at least be persuaded that they did, if he disguised it in obsolete language and unreadable orthography, and disowned all claim to the offspring of his muse. But the undeviating persistency with which the secret was maintained, must also be ascribed to his steady adherence to the purpose of completing a literary scheme, of which, in the rude onslaughts of Lambert on his surreptitious office-work; and still more, perhaps, in his own last despairing destruction of the incompleted design: mere fragments remain even of what he had accomplished. But from

those fragments, imperfect as they are, the natural growth of the poetical romance of Rowley can still be traced, and forms an indispensable chapter in the mental and moral history of its author.

The

Redcliffe coffers.

AMONG the realities which from the first appealed to all CHAP. VIII. controversialists interested in the question of Thomas Rowley versus Thomas Chatterton, as rival claimants to the authorship of the Bristol poems, Maistre Canynge's coffer and the six or seven other old chests in the muniment-room of Redcliffe Church occupied a foremost place. Till the forcing of their locks some years before Chatterton's birth, they were the undoubted receptacles of valuable ancient parchments. Long after the removal of the deeds and other legal documents deemed of practical value, their ancient hoards were but slightly diminished. But no store was set on them by their custodians, beyond such common uses as waste parchments and paper could be turned to. So they were pilfered from time to time, and at last carried off in basket loads: the greediest of the depredators being Chatterton's own father. To some remnant of his spoils his posthumous son fell heir; and for the first time the old documents found an appreciative owner.

What, then, were those old papers and parchments inherited by Chatterton, and made the basis of so wonderful a poetical and romantic structure, but of which scarcely a genuine scrap remains? It is by no means difficult to illustrate, as well as surmise, their general contents. One of the Rowley MSS. in the British Museum is attached to a portion of a genuine deed, of

K

Their old

papers and parchments.

CHAP. VIII.

A specimen deed.

True value of such materials.

Chatterton's share of them.

Visit to the old muni

ment-room.

the date 10 Hen. IV. It is a quit claim from one Bristol citizen to another, of his right in four suburban tenements; and is, no doubt, a fair type of the contents of the parish chest which may be presumed to have included deeds, presentments, assessment rolls, records and discharges of parochial disbursements, and inventories of vestments, church ornaments, &c., such as one actually printed by Walpole.

Had they been preserved, they would probably long ere this have furnished the materials for one or more such quarto volumes of Church Registers as figure among the publications of Bannatyne, Abbotsford, and other literary clubs. The "Registrum Cartarum Ecclesie Sancte Egidii de Edinburgh," for example, embodies materials invaluable for any future historian of the Scottish capital. But though this church had for its Provost, before the end of the fifteenth century, Gawin Douglas, famous among Scottish poets; and his name duly figures in its cartulary we look in vain for a fragment of his "Palice of Honoure," his "King Harte," or the vigorous prologues to his metrical rendering of the "Æneid" in the Scottish tongue.

What number of parchments of any kind fell into Chatterton's hands is uncertain. But it was probably much less than has been assumed; for he inherited only the leavings of wasteful and indiscriminate plunderers. So early as 1736, that is sixteen years before his birth, the first traces of spoliation appear in a communication to the Society of Antiquaries, of a curious memorandum,-found "in the cabinet of the late John Browning, Esq., of Barton, near Bristol ;"—of the gift by Maistre Canynge to Redcliffe Church, of a new Easter sepulchre and scenic accompaniments, for representing the mystery of the Resurrection. At a considerably later date, however, the bulk of the parchments remained intact, in the old muniment-room. Bryant describes its condition three years before Chatterton's birth, on the authority of Mr. Shiercliffe, a miniature painter of Bristol. They then lay about in heaps, covered with dust, rumpled, stained, and torn; some quite loose,

quarian

barber.

and others tied up; and he was invited by the sexton CHAP. VIII. to take some of them if he pleased. A woman acknowledged that she had carried off a lapful, and employed them in cleaning her kitchen furniture.1 Mr. Morgan, The antiaccording to the Dean of Exeter, "a curious man and a great lover of antiquities, although no scholar;" but by the account of Mr. Tyrwhitt and others, a Bristol barber made free havoc of the same ample hoard.2 Among other reminiscences of Mrs. Edkins, she stated that once, when a pupil of the poet's father, “she saw the old parchments and books so much talked of, and said to Chatterton, the father: 'Why, I remember those papers were in Canynge's house, and the church room; at which he was angry, and bid her hold her tongue; putting them up directly and out of sight, having that day been showing them to some gentlemen whom she did not know." It is obvious enough, therefore, that if Rowley's Poems had ever formed part of the contents of Canynge's coffer, they must have been destroyed or published to the world, long before the modern Rowley left his cradle.

3

First expo

sure of the parchments.

The dates assigned for the first exposure of the parchments vary from four to twenty-five years before Chatterton's birth. But at the lowest computation, they had been exposed to a dozen years of the most indiscriminate waste, before he can have interfered even as a child to turn them to any account. They had been ransacked by curious antiquaries, to whom the Rowley MSS. would I have been a coveted prize; and plundered by those to Their plunderers. whom the autograph copy of the "Canterbury Pilgrimage" would have been worth no more than the parchment on which it was written. Mrs. Chatterton and her sempstresses succeeded the elder Chatterton and his schoolboys in the work of destruction. Supposing, therefore, the boy to have rescued the residue at seven or eight years of age, the Rowleyans had to assume that he recovered from such mere gleanings a consecutive series 1 Bryant's Observations, pp. 513, 514 2 Commentary, p. 16. 3 Vide ante, p. 21.

CHAP. VIII. of poems, letters, and historical documents enough to fill two ample volumes.

What became of

them.

Barrett's

No doubt, however, Chatterton did acquire some of the Redcliffe parchments. What became of them has been accounted for in more than one way, according to the preconceived theories of the writers. "He had taste enough to find out the genuine merit of the writings, and sufficient knowledge of law to be aware he had no claim to them," says an obstinate Rowleyan, writing so recently as 1859, to "Notes and Queries ;" and so he copied the originals, "the poems," and then burned them.1 In reality they appear to have passed into the hands of one or two collectors, foremost among whom was Mr. William Barrett, the future historian of Bristol, who had already acquisitions acquired Morgan's spoils, and established friendly relations with Chatterton at an early period. We know that he did both receive in gift and purchase from the boy, spurious antiques which he regarded as of the greatest value, and did not scruple to appropriate in the full belief that they were part of the spoils of Redcliffe muniment-room. Four parchments which Chatterton picked up there, on learning whence his father had brought the others, were stated by Mrs. Chatterton, after his death, to be in Mr. Barrett's possession; and no doubt the choicest of the old hoard went the same way. The boy could entertain no idea of wrong in disposing of the sole inheritance he derived from his father. Possibly indeed the spurious antiques only made their appearance when the genuine supply failed.

Master Canynge's coffer.

The Bristol historian, after quoting from a deed the description of the "Cysta ferrata cum sex clavibus, vocata Cysta Willielmi Canynges, in domo thesauria ecclesiæ Beatæ Mariæ de Redclive,” adds: "This chest furnished Mr. Morgan with many curious parchments relative to Mr. Canynges and the Church of Redclive; and many very valuable, there is reason to believe, were taken away before, and since dispersed into private hands," including Barrett's own. So notorious indeed was he as the resetter 1 Notes and Queries, Second Series, vol. viii. p. 234.