“Farewell, my dear cousin; and, farewell, all my dear friends. I am hastening to meeting.
“W. Cookworthy.”
The works having been transferred to Bristol, were carried on by Richard Champion, who having incurred considerable expense without a proportionate return, petitioned in the same year for a further term of fourteen years patent-right to be extended to him, which was accordingly done by Act of Parliament passed in the session which commenced the 29th of November in the same year (1774). This Act and others will be found noticed in my account of the Bristol china works.
Thus ended, after the brief period of nineteen or twenty years from the first discovery of the material to its close, the manufacture of porcelain in Plymouth—a manufacture which was an honour to the locality, a credit to all concerned in it, and which has given it, and Cookworthy its founder, an imperishable name in the ceramic annals of this country.
Having passed through the history of the works, so far as scantiness of material will allow, it only remains to turn back for a few minutes to the thread of the life of Cookworthy with which I started, and to follow it, so far as may be necessary, to its close.
During the time he was engaged on the manufacture of chinaware, his ever-active mind seems to have been busied with other things as well, and he appears to have been sought, and much esteemed, by the savans of the day. Smeaton, the builder of the Eddystone Lighthouse, was an inmate of his house while the lighthouse was in progress, and they were constant companions in examining the dove-tailed blocks of stone as they were prepared on the Hoe for shipping; Wolcot—“Peter Pindar”—was a frequent visitor for days together at his house; Sir Joseph Banks, Captain Cook, and Dr. Solander, were his guests just before the famous “Voyage Round the World” and on their return, when their protégé, Omai the Otaheitan, was also his guest; Earl St. Vincent, then Captain Jervis, was his attached friend, and he was looked up to by all as a man of such large understanding, such varied and extensive knowledge, and such powers of intellectual conversation, that, as Lord St. Vincent is said often to have remarked, “whoever was in Mr. Cookworthy’s company was always wiser and better for having been in it.” He carried on considerable experiments to discover a method by which sea-water might be distilled for use on board ship. He was a disciple of Swedenborg, some of whose works he translated, and was also an accomplished astronomer, and an ardent disciple of “good old Izaac Walton.” As a preacher among the Society of Friends he seems to have been most highly esteemed, and to have been a man looked up to by the whole of that body.
In 1780, Cookworthy, then seventy-five, died in the same house in Nutt Street, Plymouth, which he had occupied from the time of his first starting in life, and a touching “testimony” to his character was given by the “monthly meeting.” He was interred with every mark of respect at Plymouth, and his memory is still warmly cherished in the locality.
Plymouth Earthenware.—The manufacture of chinaware having ceased in Plymouth in 1774 this useful and elegant art was lost to the town. Some years later rough common brown and yellow earthenware was made here. In addition to these, manufactories of fine “Queen’s Ware,” and painted, printed, and enamelled ware, were established in 1810.
In 1815 there were three separate manufactories in Plymouth. The proprietors of these various potteries were Mr. Fillis, Mr. Algar, and Mr. Hellyer.