Account of Chelsea :*" It is an irregular brick building, forming three sides of a quadrangle. The principal room is one hundred and twenty feet in length, and was originally wainscotted with carved oak, part of which is still preserved in a small building in the adjoining gardens. One of the rooms is painted, in initation of marble, which appears to have been an oratory; and some portraits on a pannel were a few years ago destroyed, which ornamented some of the larger rooms. There are embrasures, at equal distances; in the north wall of the garden, which give it the appearance of once having been fortified; and there is a subterraneous passage leading from the house towards Kensington, which has lately been for a short distance explored."+ This building was the occasional residence of the Shrewsbury family, through several descents. The first of these noble occupants was George, Earl of Shrewsbury, who was high in favour with King Henry VIII. and attended that sovereign at his interview with Francis I. at Guisnes. The Earl's sixth son was born in this house; and his son and successor, Francis, is mentioned among the freeholders in the court-rolls of the manor of Chelsea, 35 Henry VIII. George, Earl of Shrewsbury, son of the preceding Earl Francis, a distinguished courtier in the reign of Elizabeth, and who had, for many years, the custody of the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, resided for some time at this seat. It is believed that the Earl gave his Chelsea estate to his Countess, who was widow of Sir William Cavendish, as it descended to her son, William, Earl of Devonshire. After the death of this nobleman, his widow resided at Chelsea till her decease in 1648; on which event this ancient house became the property of Sir Joseph Alston, Bart. PART IV. с The same work contains an engraved view of this structure. It + History of Chelsea, 263. On taking down the mansion, no subterra nean works of consequence were discovered. In Lodge's Illustrations of English History is a letter from this Nobleman, dated Chelsea, 1585. It was subsequently in the possession of Mr. Tate; and shortly previous to its demolition, which took place in the early part of the present year (1814) was occupied as a stained paper manufactory. The site now lies waste, and destitute of a single vestige of former grandeur. About the year 1520, Sir Thomas More purchased an estate at Chelsea; and the village is emphatically and justly said by its historian" to have been rendered famous by his residing in it."* It may appear surprising that there should have been great difficulty, even more than a century back, in ascertaining the spot on which stood the dwelling of this distinguished character. But it should be remembered that the reputation of those best entitled to lasting fame is seldom calculated to make a deep impression, in their life-time, on the persons from whom acceptable traditionary intelligence is derived. Permanent esteem is of slow growth; and all those familiar with the person and habits of its object, usually quit the stage of life before it has attained a semblance of maturity. Thus, we seek in vain for the city that gave birth to Homer; and, from the same cause, so little is known of Shakspeare, as a man. Dr. King, rector of Chelsea, in a manuscript now reposited in the British Museum,† mentions four houses which have contended for the honour of affording a residence to Sir T. More ; 1. Beaufort House; 2. that which was "late Sir William Powell's," and which, at the time of Dr. King's writing, was divided into several tenements; 3. that which was formerly Sir John Danver's, then (as now) the site of Danver's Street; and 4. the house recently pulled down, and lately occupied as a manufactory of stained paper. The arguments in favour of Beaufort House appear conclusive; and they are thus stated by Dr. King, in the above MS. which is accompanied by a letter designed for Thomas Hearne, Faulkner, p. 268. + Written in 1716. No. 4455, Ayscough's Cat. in in consequence of a note by Wood, expressive of a contrary opinion, introduced in Hearne's edition of the life of Sir T. More, by Roper: "Of these four buildings Beaufort House bids fairest to be the place where Sir T. More's stood; my reasons are these that follow : "First, his grandson, Mr. Thomas More, who wrote his life, and was born in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and may well be supposed to know where the most eminent person of his ancestors lived, says that Sir Thomas More's house in Chelsea was the same which my Lord of Lincoln bought of Sir Robert Cecil. Now, it appears pretty plainly that Sir Robert Cecil's house was the same which is now (171) the Duke of Beaufort's; for, in divers places, are these letters, R. C. and also, R. c. E, with the date of the year, viz. 1597, which letters were the initials of his name and his lady's; and the year 1597, was when he newly built, or at least new-fronted it. From the Earl of Lincoln, that house was conveyed to Sir Arthur Gorges; from him to Lionel Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex; from him to King Charles the First: from the King to the Duke of Buckingham; from his son, since the Restoration, to Plummer, a citizen for debts; from the said Plummer to the Earl of Bristol, and from his heirs to the Duke of Beaufort; so that we can trace all the mesne assignments from Sir Robert Cecil to the present possessor. "2. Sir Thomas More built the south chancel of the church of Chelsea, in the east window whereof his coat of arms remain as an evidence unto this day; for that chancel belonged tó Beaufort House until Sir Arthur Gorges sold that house, but reserved the chancel to a less house near it, to which it belongs still, and is in the heirs of the late Sir William Millman ; so that the house to which the chancel originally belonged, was Sir Thomas More's, and that is Beaufort House. "If it be objected that Sir Thomas More's tomb stands in the rector's chancel, on the south side near the communion table, and since he had a chancel of his own, why did he not erect his monument there? I answer, Sir Thomas was one who often officiated at the altar, with his intimate friend Dr. Larke, who suffered also quickly after him for the matter of the supremacy, and therefore, it may be supposed, desired to lay his remains as near the altar as conveniently he could, within the rails where he used to attend mass." In an ensuing part of the letter, Dr. King endeavours to trace back such owners of the mansion as occur between Sir Robert Cecil and the distinguished founder. But this task, together with a history of the building down to a recent period, has been more successfully performed by Mr. Lysons; and we gladly profit, as to substance, by that writer's statement, aided by the circumstantial labours of Mr. Faulkner. The custody of Sir Thomas More's mansion at Chelsea was granted, in the 28th of Henry VIII. to Sir William Paulet, the politic courtier who accommodated himself to every change of state-principles, by being " the willow rather than the oak," and who was afterwards created Marquis of Winchester. This Nobleman attained the age of ninety-seven ; and Edward VI. granted him in fee, this house and all other premises in Chelsea and Kensington forfeited by the attainder of Sir T. More. It is signified by Norden and by Lambarde that the Marquis of Winchester greatly improved, and enlarged the building. Soon after the decease of Winifred, widow of the Marquis, who died in 1586, the mansion appears to have been in the possession of Gregory, Lord Dacre, who married her daughter by Sir Richard Sackville. Lady Dacre, who survived her Lord, though but for a few months, bequeathed her house at Chelsea, with all its appurtenances, to the great Lord Burleigh, with remainder to his son Robert, afterwards Earl of Salisbury • Lady Dacre was frequently visited, while residing here, by her brother, the accomplished and amiable Lord Buckhurst. Several letters of this learned Nobleman are dated from Chelsea. 1 Sir Robert Cecil is Salisbury and Lord High Treasurer. thought to have either entirely rebuilt, or greatly altered, the mansion; as, according to the MS. of Dr. King already quoted, the initials of his name, and that of his lady, were to be seen on the pipes, and in some of the rooms. Sir Robert Cecil sold the house to Henry Fiennes, Earl of Lincoln, whose daughter conveyed it by marriage to Sir Arthur Gorges. By Sir Arthur the estate was conveyed in 1619, to Lionel Lord Cranfield, afterwards Earl of Middlesex. This Earl held the property till 1625, when he sold it to King Charles I.* who, two years afterwards, granted it to George Villiers, the powerful Duke of Buckingham. When the estates of the second Duke of Buckingham were sequestered by a vote of the Parliament, the mansion at Chelsea, which was now known by the name of Buckingham House, was first committed to the custody of John Lisle, one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal, and was afterwards granted for twenty one years to Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, also a Comissioner of the Great Seal, and the well-known author of some publications connected with the history of his own eventful era. After the Restoration, George, the second Duke of Buckingham, recovered his father's estates; and at Chelsea, on the spot once occupied by the sage, and equally moral and witty, Sir Thomas More, occasionally resided this profligate nobleman, whose poignancy of wit has only served to render his want of judgment, and of principle, the more lamentably me norable: A man so various, that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome. In squandering wealth was his peculiar art, C 3 Beggar'd • It has been erroneously asserted by some writers that when the Earl of Middlesex was dismissed from his office and fined, the Duke of Buckingham procured his house at Chelsea for his share of the fine, |