In September, 1768, a new bridge was opened at Bristol over the Avon; and Chatterton, who had now been apprenticed to an attorney, took advantage of the occasion to send anonymously to the printer of Farley’s Bristol Journal a description of the mayor’s first passing over the old bridge in the reign of Henry II.  This was composed in obsolete language and alleged to have been copied from a contemporary manuscript.  It was the first published of Chatterton’s fabrications.  In the years 1768-69 he produced and gave to Mr. George Catcott the long tragical interude “Aella,” “The Bristowe Tragedie,” and other shorter pieces, all of which he declared to be transcripts from manuscripts in Canynge’s chest, and the work of Thomas Rowley, a secular priest of Bristol, who flourished about 1460.  Catcott was a local book-collector and the partner of Mr. Burgum.  He was subsequently nicknamed “Rowley’s midwife.”

In December, 1768, Chatterton opened a correspondence with James Dodsley, the London publisher, saying that several ancient poems had fallen into his hands, copies of which he offered to supply him, if he would send a guinea to cover expenses.  He inclosed a specimen of “Aella.”  “The motive that actuates me to do this,” he wrote, “is to convince the world that the monks (of whom some have so despicable an opinion) were not such blockheads as generally thought, and that good poetry might be wrote in the dark days of superstition, as well as in these more enlightened ages.”  Dodsley took no notice of the letters, and the owner of the Rowley manuscripts next turned to Horace Walpole, whose tastes as a virtuoso, a lover of Gothic, and a romancer might be counted on to enlist his curiosity in Chatterton’s find.  The document which he prepared for Walpole was a prose paper entitled “The Ryse of Peyncteynge yn Englande, wroten by T. Rowleie, 1469, for Mastre Canynge,” and containing inter alia, the following extraordinary “anecdote of painting” about Afflem, an Anglo-Saxon glass-stainer of Edmond’s reign who was taken prisoner by the Danes.  “Inkarde, a soldyer of the Danes, was to slea hym; onne the Nete before the Feeste of Deathe hee founde Afflem to bee hys Broder Affrighte chanynede uppe hys soule.  Gastnesse dwelled yn his Breaste.  Oscarre, the greate Dane, gave hest hee shulde bee forslagene with the commeynge Sunne:  no tears colde availe; the morne cladde yn roabes of ghastness was come, whan the Danique Kynge behested Oscarre to arraie hys Knyghtes eftsoones for Warre.  Afflem was put yn theyre flyeynge Battailes, sawe his Countrie ensconced wyth Foemen, hadde hys Wyfe ande Chyldrenne brogten Capteeves to hys Shyppe, ande was deieynge wythe Soorowe, whanne the loude blautaunte Wynde hurled the battayle agaynste an Heck.  Forfraughte wythe embolleynge waves, he sawe hys Broder, Wyfe and Chyldrenne synke to Deathe:  himself was throwen onne a Banke ynne the Isle of Wyghte, to lyve hys lyfe forgard to all Emmoise:  thus moche for Afflem."[8]