a large town in the hundred of Larkfield, of the county of Kent. It forms a continuous street between the city of Rochester and the town of Brompton. It is on the river Medway, in which, opposite the town, some of the largest ships of war are in ordinary. The defences are powerful, and are kept in good repair. The dock-yard, including the ordnance wharf, is nearly a mile in length, and some of the store-rooms are 700 feet long while the sail-loft is more than 200 feet long. The new rope-house, where cables are made 120 fathoms in length and twenty-two inches round, is 1140 feet long. In the yard are four docks for repairing and six for building the largest ships. The other remarkable public institutions are the victualling office, the marine barracks, and several hospitals. The population amounted in 1811 to 14,640, in 1821 to 15,268, and in 1831 to 16,485.

**Chatham Island.** There are three islands of this name. The first is about two miles long and half a mile broad, situated in a bay of the larger Andaman Island, in the Bay of Bengal. The second is an island in the South Pacific Ocean, discovered in 1791 by Lieutenant Broughton, of which, or its products, very little is known. Long. 183. 2. E. Lat. of the most northern point of the island 43. 43. S. The third is another island in the South Pacific Ocean, beautifully diversified with hill and dale, and of a large size. Long. 172. 18. W. Lat. 13. 32. S.

**Chatillon,** an arrondissement in the department of Côte d'Or, in France. It extends over 820 square miles, and is divided into six cantons, and these into 116 communes, containing 48,170 inhabitants. The chief place, which is of the same name, but, to distinguish it, has the addition "sur Seine," contains a population of 3900 persons. It carries on a moderate trade in cloth, serges, hose, and cotton spinning. Long. 4. 23. E. Lat. 47. 23. N.

**Chatillon les Dombes,** a city of the department of Ain, in France, on the river Chalaronne, containing 375 houses and 3194 inhabitants.

**Chattels,** a Norman term, under which were anciently comprehended all movable goods, those immovable being termed *feud* or *fee.*

**Chattels,** in the modern sense of the word, are all sorts of goods, movable or immovable, except such as are in the nature of freehold.

**Chatteris,** a town in the Isle of Ely, in Cambridgeshire, seventy-two miles from London. It is near the great drain from the Bedford level. It stands in a marshy but not unhealthy situation. The inhabitants amounted in 1811 to 2399, in 1821 to 3283, and in 1831 to 4177.

**Chatterpoor,** a city of Hindustan, in the province of Allahabad, and district of Bundelcund. This is a very ancient town, which was founded by a rajah named Chatteral, and was occasionally his residence. It was in consequence a very flourishing city, and an important commercial mart, being a great entrepot of trade between Benares and the Deccan, and at a very short distance from the diamond mines of Pannah. It was once an extensive town and well built, the houses being of stone; but it is now comparatively desolate. On the conclusion of the last peace with the Mahrattas it came into the possession of the British, before which it was occupied, along with a large portion of the surrounding territory, by a petty chief, who, assisted by others, had rendered the country a perpetual scene of disturbance. The travelling distance from Agra is 212 miles, from Calcutta 698, and from Bombay 747 miles. Long. 79. 53. E. Lat. 24. 57. N.

**Chatterton,** Thomas, an unfortunate poet, whose fate and performances excited in no small degree the public attention, as well as gave rise to much literary controversy. He was born at Bristol on the 20th of November 1752, and educated at a charity school on St. Augustine's Back, where nothing more was taught than reading, writing, and accounts. At the age of fourteen he was articled as a clerk to an attorney at Bristol, with whom he continued about three years; yet, though his education was thus confined, he discovered an early propensity for poetry and English antiquities, and particularly towards heraldry. How soon he took to writing and became an author is not known. In the Town and Country Magazine for March 1769, there are two letters, probably from him, as they are dated from Bristol, and subscribed with his usual signature, D. B., that is; *Dunhelmus Bristoliensis.* The former contains short extracts from two manuscripts "written 300 years ago by one Rowley, a monk;" concerning dress in the age of Henry II.; the latter "Ethelgar, a Saxon poem," in bombast prose. In the same magazine for May 1769 there are three communications from Bristol, with the same signature D. B. one of them entitled "Observations upon Saxon Heraldry, with drawings of Saxon Achievements;" and in the subsequent months of 1769 and 1770 there are several other pieces in the same magazine, which are undoubtedly of his composition.

In April 1770 he left Bristol, disgusted with his profession, and filled with irreconcilable aversion to the line of life for which he was intended; and coming to London in hopes of advancing his fortune by his pen, he sunk at once from the sublimity of his views to an absolute dependence on the patronage of booksellers. He wrote incessantly in various periodical publications. In July 1770, he tells his sister that he had pieces last month in several magazines; in the Gospel Magazine, the Town and Country, the Court and City, the London, the Political Register, &c. But all these exertions of his genius brought in so little profit, that he was soon reduced to extreme indigence; so that at last, oppressed with poverty and disease, he in a fit of despair put an end to his existence, August 1770, by means of poison.

In 1777 were published, in one volume 8vo, "Poems, supposed to have been written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley and others, in the fifteenth century; the greatest part now first published from the most authentic copies, with an engraved specimen of one of the MSS.; to which are added, a Preface, an Introductory Account of the several pieces, and a Glossary." And in 1778 were published, in one volume 8vo, "Miscellanies in Prose and Verse, by Thomas Chatterton, the supposed author of the Poems published under the names of Rowley, &c." Of Rowley's poems we have the following account in the preface, given in the words of Mr. George Catcott of Bristol, to whom, it is said, the public is indebted for them. "The first discovery of certain MSS. having been deposited in Redclift church above three centuries ago, was made in the year 1768, at the time of opening the new bridge at Bristol; and was owing to a publication in Farley's Weekly Journal, Oct. I., containing an account of the ceremonies observed at the opening of the old bridge, taken, as it was said, from a very ancient MS. This excited the curiosity of some persons to inquire after the original. The printer, Mr. Farley, could give no account of it, or of the person who brought the copy; but after much inquiry, it was discovered that this person was a youth between fifteen and sixteen years of age, whose name was Thomas Chatterton, and whose family had been sextons of Redclift church for near 150 years. His father, who was now dead, had also been master of the free school in Pile Street. The young man was at first very unwilling to discover from whence he had the original; but, after many promises made to him, was at last prevailed on to acknowledge that he had received this, together with many other MSS. from his father, who had found them in a large chest in an upper room over the chapel on the north side of Redclift church." It is added, that soon after this Mr. Catcott commenced an acquaintance with Chatterton, and succeeded in procuring from him, partly as presents, partly as purchases, copies of many of his manuscripts in prose and verse; and other copies were disposed of in like manner to different persons. But whatever may have been Chatterton's part in this very extraordinary transaction; whether he was the author, or only, as he constantly asserted, the copier of all these productions; he appears to have kept the secret entirely to himself, and not to have put it in any one's power to bear certain testimony either to his fraud or to his veracity.

This affair, however, gave rise to a protracted controversy among the critics. The poems in question, publish- ed in 1777, were republished in 1778, with an "Appendix," containing some observations upon the language of the poems attributed to Rowley; tending to prove that they were written, not by any ancient author, but entirely by Thomas Chatterton." Mr Warton, in the third volume of his History of English Poetry, espoused the same side of the question. On the other hand there have appeared, "Observations" upon these poems, "in which their authenticity is ascertained," by Jacob Bryant, Esq. 1781, 8vo; and another edition of the "Poems, with a Commentary, in which their antiquity is considered and defended, by Jeremiah Milles, D.D. Dean of Exeter, 1782," 4to.

That Chatterton was the author of the Rowley poems is now admitted by all intelligent critics. However wonderful it may seem that they were composed by a youth who had not completed his sixteenth year, it has been satisfactorily proved by Mr Warton that it was impossible that the poems could have been written by Rowley in the fifteenth century. A subscription edition of Chatterton's works, for the benefit of his sister Mrs Newton, was announced in 1799; but for want of encouragement the publication was postponed till 1803, when it came forth under the joint editorship of Messrs Southey and Cottle, in three vols. 8vo, with the life of Chatterton prefixed, by G. Gregory, D.D., which had appeared in Kippis's edition of the Biographia Britannica.