In the summer of 1764 Chatterton was barely twelve, and wonderful as his precocity was, it is doubtful whether he had got so far in the evolution of the Rowley legend as Thistlethwaite's story would imply. But it is certain that three years later, in the spring of 1767, Chatterton gave Mr. Henry Burgum, a worthy pewterer of Bristol, a parchment emblazoned with the "de Bergham," coat-of-arms, which he pretended to have found in St. Mary's Church, furnishing him also with two copy-books, in which were transcribed the "de Bergham," pedigree, together with three poems in pseudo-antique spelling. One of these, "The Tournament," described a joust in which figured one Sir Johan de Berghamme, a presumable ancestor of the gratified pewterer. Another of them, "The Romaunte of the Cnyghte," purported to be the work of this hero of the tilt-yard, "who spent his whole life in tilting," but notwithstanding found time to write several books and translate "some part of the Iliad under the title 'Romance of Troy.'" All this stuff was greedily swallowed by Burgum, and the marvelous boy next proceeded to befool Mr. William Barrett, a surgeon and antiquary who was engaged in writing a history of Bristol. To him he supplied copies of supposed documents in the muniment room of Redcliffe Church: "Of the Auntiaunte Forme of Monies," and the like: deeds, bills, letters, inscriptions, proclamations, accounts of churches and other buildings, collected by Rowley for his patron, Canynge: many of which this singularly uncritical historian incorporated in his "History of Bristol," published some twenty years later. He also imparted to Barrett two Rowleian poems, "The Parliament of Sprites," and "The Battle of Hastings" (in two quite different versions). 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."