“I was removed very young, along with my mother, to Skelton, near Newby; and thence, at five or six years old, my father making a little purchase at Bondgate, near Ripon, his family went thither. There I went to school; where I was made capable of reading the Testament, which was all I was ever taught, except, a long time after, for about a month, in a very advanced age for that, with the reverend Mr. Alcock, of Burnsal. “After this, about thirteen or fourteen years of age, I went to my father at Newby, and attended him in the family there, till the death of Sir Edward Blackett. It was here my propensity to literature first appeared, for being always of a solitary disposition, and uncommonly fond of retirement and books, I enjoyed here all the repose and opportunity I could wish. My study at that time was engaged in the mathematics: I know not what my acquisitions were, but I am certain my application was intense and unwearied. I found in my father’s library there, which contained a very great number of books in most branches, Kersey’s Algebra, Leybourn’s Cursus Mathematicus, Ward’s Young Mathematician’s Guide, Harris’ Algebra, &c. and a great many more; but these being the books in which I was ever most conversant, I remember them the better. I was even then equal to the management of quadratic equations, and their geometrical constructions. After we left Newby, I repeated the same studies in Bondgate, and went over all parts I had studied before, I believe not altogether unsuccessfully. “Being about the age of sixteen, I was sent for to London, being thought, upon examination by Mr. Christopher Blackett, qualified to serve him as book-keeper in his counting-house. Here, after a year or two, I took the small-pox and suffered most severely under that distemper. I returned home again, and there with leisure on my hands, and a new addition of authors to those brought me from Newby, I renewed not only my mathematical studies, but began and prosecuted others, of a different turn, with much avidity and diligence. These were poetry, history, and antiquities; the charms of which quite destroyed all the heavier beauties of numbers in lines, whose applications and properties I now pursued no longer, except occasionally in teaching. “I was, after some time employed in this manner, invited into Netherdale, my native air, where I first engaged in a school, and where, unfortunately enough for me, I married. The misconduct of the wife which that place afforded me, has procured me this prosecution, this prison, this infamy, and this sentence.