Chinese immigrants to the United Kingdom currently has more than 400,000, around 0.7% of the United Kingdom population. The first notable Chinese known to visit Britain was Michael Alphonsius Shen Fu-tsung in 1687, who travelled to Europe with a Belgian Jesuit Father Philippe Couplet. Shen helped to translate Chinese works at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. He and Couplet left in 1688. 16th Century From family history tracing on Familysearch.org and Ancestry.com using birth, christening, marriage, death and burial records, the first Chinese person to immigrate to Britain, settling in Brighton now seems to be Richard Lynn (林 Lín). He married a British woman called Joane, possibly Edwards, on 14 January 1594 (see: https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:V52F-GDM) and had at least two children, Richard and Derick. The Lynn/Lin line lasted at least seven generations and seems to have ended with Ann Linn born 1777 also in Brighton. It is not known which year he arrived in Brighton, but it could have been 1593, giving him up to a year to meet and get to know his future wife. This is 186 years before the previously thought first immigrant. 18th Century The next known Chinese to immigrate to Britain, settling in Scotland, was William Macao who lived in Edinburgh from 1779. He married a British woman and had children. He worked for The Board of Excise in Scotland for over 40 years. He was involved in a significant court case in 1818 related to naturalization and, for a period, gained Scottish nationality. He is buried in St Cuthbert's Graveyard in Edinburgh. 1800s to World War II In the early 19th century, Chinese seamen began to establish small communities in the port cities of Liverpool and London. In London, the Limehouse area became the site of the first European Chinatown. The East India Company, which imported popular Chinese commodities such as tea, ceramics and silks, also brought Asian sailors and needed trustworthy intermediaries to arrange their care and lodgings while they were in London. A Chinese seaman known as John Anthony took on the lucrative role of looking after Chinese sailors for the East India Company in the late 18th and early 19th century. Anthony married his British partner's daughter. Wishing to buy property, but unable to so while an alien, in 1805 he used part of the fortune he had amassed to pay for an Act of Parliament naturalising him as a British