_Bricgestowe_, "place of the bridge"--bridge, namely, over the Avon
stream, not far above its confluence with the Severn. Here Chatterton
was born in 1752, the posthumous son of a dissipated schoolmaster, whose
ancestors for a hundred and fifty years had been, in unbroken succession,
sextons to the church of St. Mary Redcliffe. Perhaps it may be more than
an idle fancy to attribute to heredity the bent which Chatterton's genius
took spontaneously and almost from infancy; to guess that some mysterious
ante-natal influence--"striking the electric chain wherewith we are
darkly bound"--may have set vibrating links of unconscious association
running back through the centuries. Be this as it may, Chatterton was
the child of Redcliffe Church. St. Mary stood by his cradle and rocked
it; and if he did not inherit with his blood, or draw in with his
mother's milk a veneration for her ancient pile; at least the waters of
her baptismal font[2] seemed to have signed him with the token of her
service. Just as truly as "The Castle of Otranto" was sprung from
Strawberry Hill, the Rowley poems were born of St. Mary's Church.

Chatterton's father had not succeeded to the sextonship, but he was a
sub-chanter in Bristol Cathedral, and his house and school in Pile Street
were only a few yards from Redcliffe Church. In this house Chatterton
was born, under the eaves almost of the sanctuary; and when his mother
removed soon after to another house, where she maintained herself by
keeping a little dame's school and doing needle work, it was still on
Redcliffe Hill and in close neighborhood to St. Mary's. The church
itself--"the pride of Bristowe and the western land"--is described as
"one of the finest parish churches in England,"[3] a rich specimen of
late Gothic or "decorated" style; its building or restoration dating from
the middle of the fifteenth century. Chatterton's uncle by marriage,
Richard Phillips, had become sexton in 1748, and the boy had the run of
the aisles and transepts. The stone effigies of knights, priests,