Page:Men of Kent and Kentishmen.djvu/46

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MEN OF KENT,

which however, had already appeared at Bruges. Whilst conducting his press he was patronized by Edward IV., Richard III., Henry VII., and many of the nobility, and continued busy at the new art till his death, in 1492. Caxton's life has been written by Oldys in the "Biographia Britannica," by John Lewis (1738), by Charles Knight, and by William Blades (1861).


Joseph Champion,

PENMAN.

This celebrated professor of a useful art, was born at Chatham in 1709. He received his education at Johnson's Free Writing School in Foster Lane, London. He set up a boarding school in St. Paul's Church Yard, and subsequently in Bedford, at both of which academies he had many scholars, some of them persons of rank. He published a great number of Manuals upon Penmanship, and contributed 47 folio pieces to "Bickham's Universal Penman," in which he displays a beautiful variety of writing, both for ornament and use. He died about 1762.

[See "Massey's Origin of Letters," "Bromley's and Evan's Catalogues of Engraved Portraits."]


William James Chaplin,

THE HEAD OF THE GREAT FIRM OF CHAPLIN & HORNE,

Was born at Rochester in 1787, and his history affords a remarkable example of a man rising from the humblest ranks, by talents and energy, to a foremost place with