At the death of this prince, his secret was lost, and it was a long time afterwards, at the end of the seventeenth century, that John Dwight, a potter, of Fulham, in Middlesex, took a patent for what is curiously reported by Dr. Plot as "_the mystery of transparent earthenware commonly knowne by the name of porcelaine and Persian ware_." Made from English materials, it is probable that this was nothing better than a kind of white stoneware, possessing little of those qualities which would entitle it to the name of porcelain. Next to that in date would be the soft porcelain made at the manufactory of St. Cloud, which was said to produce, in 1698, pieces of ware considered very good imitations of the Oriental. This was the origin of the French soft porcelain, which was carried on afterwards with varied success at Chantilly, Vincennes, and other places, till it was definitely settled, in 1756, by King Louis XV. in the royal establishment of SA"vres. At a corresponding period, on this side of the Channel, the efforts of our potters were varied and numerous. If we are to believe Dr. Martyn Lister, a manufactory of porcelain existed at Chelsea as far back as 1698, a fact which would establish for England a claim equal to that of France for the discovery of the soft porcelain. This is not altogether improbable, considering that there was a glass manufactory in that locality before that, and that many people had a notion that porcelain was nothing else than a glass hardened and made opaque. The managers of these glass-works may have experimented on that supposition, and the conjecture is strengthened by the fact, that pounded glass was always used at Chelsea to give the desired transparency. Good specimens are not, however, recorded before 1745, and it is probable that many of the improvements at Chelsea were realized by the Staffordshire potters, who, two years later, went there to apply their industry. The priority in making practically good ware belongs to the works established in 1730 at Stratford-le-Bow, from which the Bow porcelain took its name. It was not perfected there, however, before 1744, when a china, softer than that made at Chelsea, and nearer to that made at Vincennes, was manufactured by a potter named Frye, originally a painter, who seems to have been the promoter and manager of these works, which at one time did not employ less than three hundred people. Bow was celebrated for its statuettes, and it is said that several of them were modelled by Bacon, the sculptor. The successes of Bow and Chelsea were great but of short duration, for both had ceased to exist in 1775, when their utensils and moulds were sold to Mr. William Dwesbury, and carried to Derby, where this enterprising gentleman had started a manufactory as far back as 1751.