soon married a Frenchwoman, and set up in Bartholomew Lane as a writing engraver.
About 1782 he sold this business and migrated to Vauxhall, where he now pursued the higher branches of his art. True to the prophet’s fate, he was in due course elected an honorary member of the Imperial Academy at Vienna and of the Royal Academy at Munich. In early days he had been a friend of Thomas Paine and Horne Tooke, and was, in fact, examined before the Privy Council on treasonable charges, but soon dismissed as a harmless enthusiast. After becoming a convert to Swedenborg, he became a brave upholder of Joanna Southcott, and was the very last of her adherents to admit the reality of her death.
A good Chippendale plate is that of “The Rev. John Watson.” He was born on March 26th, 1725, at Lyme Handley in the parish of Prestbury, Cheshire, and became a learned antiquary. He was elected F.S.A. in 1759, and contributed six papers to Archæologia. In 1775 appeared his best-known work. The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Halifax, Yorkshire, where he had held a curacy from 1750 to 1754. In 1782 he brought out two fine quarto volumes, Memoirs of the Ancient Earls of Warren and Surrey. He died at Stockport on March 14th, 1783.
A good Chippendale bookplate is that of “Edward Trotter, A.M.”
In the Lyon Register the arms are given as of Trotter of Gatchibraw, in Scotland, argent a chevron gules between three boars’ heads, couped sable. Crest a horse trotting proper.