“Of Wood Street, London.
“Robert Reynolds,
“Of Coventry.
“And be it remembered, that the twelfth day of September, in the year above written, the said Richard Champion came before our said Lord the King in his Chancery, and acknowledged the writing aforesaid, and all and everything therein contained and specified, as form above written. And also the writing aforesaid was stampt according to the tenor of the statute made in the sixth year of the reign of the King and Queen William and Mary of England, and so forth.
“Enrolled the fifteenth day of September, in the year above written.”
The works of Richard Champion were in Castle Green, Bristol, and I was enabled, in 1863, assisted by the researches of Mr. Edkins, kindly undertaken at my request, to fix the exact locality both of the works and of Champion’s residence. This he determined by the singularly fortuitous circumstance of a Directory for the city of Bristol having been published—and for that one year only—in the year in which Champion obtained his Act of Parliament, 1775. In this Directory, which is of extreme rarity, occurs the following entry:—
“Champion, Richard, China Manufactory, 15, and his house, 17, Castle Green.”
This occurs in the alphabetical list of “Merchants, Tradesmen, &c.,” and in another list of the “Merchants and Bankers and their residences,” is the following:—
“Champion, Richard, 17, Castle Green.”
It is perhaps worth just mentioning that this Directory, so opportunely made, is an admirable illustration of the difficulties under which compilers of those useful publications had to labour in the olden times. It was compiled by a person of the name of Sketchley, and, most of the houses not being in those days numbered, he carried with him a lot of metal figures, and nailed them on to the doors as he went on, charging a shilling at each house for doing so; and it is related of him that, with a strict eye to business, he excluded the names of some persons from his list who refused to pay the impost! Fortunately for my purpose, Richard Champion had evidently paid a couple of shillings, and so ensured not only his residence at No. 17, but his works at No. 15 being duly entered. The site of the china works is now covered with small houses.