Chelsea, in the Olden & Present Times

by George Bryan

Sir Thomas More’s House.

Sir Thomas More purchased an estate at Chelsea, about the year 1520, and built himself a house, as Erasmus describes it, “neither mean nor subject to envy, yet magnificent and commodious enough.” The site of this house has been long disputed. The Rev. Dr. King, (who is noticed amongst the rectors of the Old Church), in his “Letter designed for Mr. Hearne,” relative to Sir Thomas More’s house, and which is in the British Museum, says, “As seven cities in Greece contended for the birthplace of Homer, so there are no fewer than four houses in this parish which lay claim to Sir Thomas More’s residence, viz.: that which is now the Duke of Beaufort’s; that which was lately Sir Joseph Alstone’s; that which was once Sir Reginald Bray’s, and afterwards William Powell’s, which is now built into several tenements; and that which was lately Sir John Danvers’s, which is also now pulled down; and on part of the ground a small street is built, called Danvers Street, and some other houses. Now of all these, in my opinion, Beaufort House bids fairest to be the place where Sir Thomas More’s stood.” He then proceeds to give his reasons for arriving at this conclusion, which, when considered in connection with the statements of other writers on the subject, clearly establishes the correctness of Dr. King’s opinion. Sir Thomas More’s house, therefore, we will conclude stood almost on the site of what is now called Beaufort Street, facing Battersea Bridge. After his death, however, very considerable alterations and additions were made by succeeding occupants, both in regard to the house and grounds attached to it. The house, in its altered state, was pulled down about 140 years ago.

Erasmus gives a pleasing description of the manner of More’s living with his wife and family at Chelsea. “There he conversed with his wife,” says he, “his son, his daughter-in-law, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grand-children. There is not a man living so affectionate to his children as he; he loveth his old wife as well as if she was a young maid.” Fox, in his Martyrology, however, throws a sad blast over the character of More. He states that More used to bind heretics to a tree in his garden, called “The Tree of Troth,” but this was denied by More himself. Henry VIII., to whom he owed his rise and fall, frequently came to Chelsea to visit him. Sometimes the king would ascend to the house-top with him to observe the stars and converse on astronomy. Amongst the illustrious foreigners entertained and patronised by Sir Thomas More, may be mentioned Hans Holbein, a celebrated painter, who lived with him for nearly three years painting portraits of him, his relations, and friends. It is generally admitted that he had a house in Chelsea for aged people, whom he daily relieved.

More delighted in telling the following “merrie story,” as he termed it:—A friar while preaching “spyed a poore wyfe of the paryshe whysperyng to her pew-fellow, and he fallyng angry thereto, cryde out unto her aloude, ‘Hold thy babble, I byd thee, thou wyfe in the red hood!’” He regularly attended Chelsea Church, and very often assisted at the celebration of Mass, and at times he would put on a surplice and join the quire.

The pathetic story of More’s wit was never so touchingly illustrated as on the day after he resigned the Great Seal. He went to Chelsea Church as usual with his wife and family, none of whom he had yet informed of his resignation. During the service, as was his custom, he sat in the choir, in a surplice. After service it was the custom for one of his attendants to go to her ladyship’s pew, and say, “My Lord is gone before.” But this day the Ex-Chancellor came himself, and making a low bow, said, “Madam, my Lord is gone.” Then, on their way home, to her great mortification, he unriddled his mournful pleasantry by telling her his lordship was gone, in the loss of his official dignities.

Sir Thomas had four children, three daughters and one son; the latter was the youngest. His first wife wished very much for a boy; at last she brought this son, who proved to be of slender capacity; upon which he said to her, “You have prayed so long for a boy, that now you have got one that will be a boy as long as he lives.” The good lady walked away from him.

By indefatigable application, More cleared the Court of Chancery of all its causes. One day, having ended a cause, he called for the next, and was told there was “no other depending in the Court.” He was delighted to hear it, and ordered it to be inserted on the records of the Court. It gave rise to the following epigram, not the worst in the English language:—

“When More some time had Chancellor been
No More suits did remain;
The same shall never More be seen
Till More be there again.”

The pitiful story of More’s daughter, Margaret, parting with her beloved father, on the morning of his cruel execution, is truly affecting. She followed him to the scaffold—embraced him, implored his blessing, wept upon his cheek, bidding him in anguish adieu. A second time she went forward to him, clung round his neck and kissed him, when at last, notwithstanding his apparent gravity, tears fell from his eyes * * * and soon afterwards she was severed from him for ever! It appears that his original intention to be interred in the Old Church, was unhappily not fulfilled. Dr. King states that “his body was buried in the chapel of St. Peter, in the Tower, and his head, after some months, was bought by his daughter, Margaret, and taken down from London Bridge, where it was fixed upon a pole, and was buried,” probably as stated, in St. Dunstan’s, near Canterbury. Aubery, however, asserts that “after he was beheaded, his trunke was interred in Chelsey Church, near the middle of the south wall, where was some slight monument erected, which being worne by time, Sir John Lawrence, of Chelsey, at his own proper costs and chardges, built to his memorie a handsome one, with inscription, of marble.” This statement, as regards the interment of Sir Thomas More’s body, does not accord with the opinion of most other writers on the subject.

After the death of More, his mansion was granted in the 28th of Henry VIII. to Sir William Paulet, afterwards Marquis of Winchester, to whom Edward VI. granted in fee both that and all other premises in Chelsea and Kensington, forfeited by his attainder.

The Marquis of Winchester, who was so much of a courtier as to accommodate himself to princes as well as to subjects of very different characters, was, from his natural and acquired abilities, perfectly qualified to act with propriety in the highest offices of the state. In the reign of Edward VI. he was made Lord High Treasurer of England. It is said that by his councils, in a great measure, the Duke of Northumberland’s design of setting the Lady Jane Grey on the throne was prevented; for which good office of loyalty to them, the Queens, Mary and Elizabeth, continued him in the Treasurer’s Office, which he enjoyed for thirty years; and on being asked how he preserved himself in that place through so many changes of government, he answered, “By being a willow, and not an oak.” He died in 1572, aged 97 years. The marquis greatly enlarged and improved the house, and, according to Norden, “adorned Chelsea with stately buildings.” His eldest son, John, second Marquis of Winchester, died at Chelsea in 1576. The widow of the first marquis died in 1586.

Gregory, Lord Dacre, soon afterwards had possession of Sir Thomas More’s house. He was the son of Thomas Fynes Lord Dacre, who succeeded his grandfather in the 26th of Henry VIII.; and who, in 1541, was engaged with some other persons in chasing the deer in Sir Nicholas Pelham’s park, when a fray arising between them and the keepers, in which one of the latter was killed, he was found guilty of being accessary to the murder, and suffered death accordingly; but his children were restored to their honours in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Gregory, Lord Dacre, died at Chelsea in 1594, without issue; and his sister Margaret, the wife of Samuel Lennard, Esq., claimed the barony, and was allowed it in the second of James I.

Lady Dacre survived her husband but a few months, and bequeathed her house at Chelsea, with all its appurtenances, to the great Lord Burleigh, with remainder to his son Robert, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, and Lord High Treasurer. “I have seen,” says Lysons, “among the records at the Rolls Chapel, a pardon of alienation to Sir Robert Cecil, dated June 21, 39th Elizabeth, for acquiring these premises of Thomas Lord Buckhurst.” This distinguished nobleman, afterwards Earl of Dorset, was brother to Lady Dacre, and resided frequently with his sister at Chelsea, but it is not known whether he had any interest in the estate.

The Earl of Salisbury is supposed to have rebuilt Sir Thomas More’s house, as the initials of his name were to be seen on the pipes and in several of the rooms.

Henry Clinton, Earl of Lincoln, bought the house of the Earl of Salisbury, and probably came immediately to reside in it, as there are some entries respecting his family in the Parish Register in the beginning of the year 1609. By his first wife, Lady C. Hastings, daughter of Francis, Earl of Huntingdon, he had two sons, Thomas, his successor in the title, and Edward; and by his second wife, widow of W. Norris, Esq., he had a daughter, Elizabeth, who married Sir Arthur Gorges, and also two sons, Henry and Robert. The latter died in 1609, and was buried at Chelsea.

Sir Arthur Gorges, on the death of Henry, Earl of Lincoln, became the possessor of the house, and he and Lady Elizabeth, his wife, in consideration of £4300, sold it to Sir Lionel Cranfield, afterwards created Earl of Middlesex. It was described as the “greatest house at Chelsea, with two fore great courts adjoining, environed with brick walls, also a wharf (landing-place for a pleasure boat, &c.) lying in front, having a high brick tower on the east and west ends, and a high water tower, standing upon the west corner of the wharf, and the watercourse belonging thereto. An orchard, a garden, having a peryment standing up in the middle, and a terrace on the north end thereof, with a banquetting house at the east end of the terrace, having a marble table in it. A great garden, dovecote close, containing five acres, the kitchen garden, brick-barne close, containing ten acres.” Lord Middlesex held the mansion till 1625, when he sold it to Charles I., who, in 1627, granted the said house, &c., to the Duke of Buckingham.

George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, the son of Sir George Villiers, was born in 1592. By the elegance of his person, and the courtliness of his address, he gained as great an ascendance over King James as the favourite of any other prince is known to have done by a long course of assiduity and insinuation. The Earl of Clarendon says, that the duke “was of a most flowing courtesy and affability to all men who made any address to him, and so desirous to oblige them, that he did not enough consider the value of the obligation, or the merit of the person he chose to oblige; from which much of his misfortune resulted.” He married Lady Catherine Manners, the daughter of Francis, Earl of Rutland, by whom he had three sons and a daughter; he was assassinated at Portsmouth in 1628, by one Felton. The eldest son, George, who succeeded him in his title and estates, being very young at the time of his father’s murder, was sent to travel during the civil wars; and returning to England whilst Charles I. was under restraint, he and his brother, Lord Francis Villiers, thought themselves obliged to venture their lives and fortunes for the king at the first opportunity. Soon after, the Parliament voted that he should be proceeded against as a traitor, and that his estates should be sequestered.

Sir Thomas More’s house, for such it ought still to be considered, notwithstanding the great alterations made in it, was now known as Buckingham House, in consequence of its having been granted to the first Duke of Buckingham. It appears by the following extract from a periodical paper after that duke’s death, to have been in possession of his daughter Mary, who married James, Duke of Richmond and Lenox: “The Duchess of Lenox, daughter of the Duke of Buckingham, being then at Oxford, petitioned the Lords for leave to come to London, or to her house at Chelsey, to be under Dr. Mayerne’s hands for her health; a pass was ordered for her, and the concurrence of the Commons desired.”

Buckingham House, in 1649, having been seized by the Parliament, was committed to the custody of John Lisle, one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal. This gentleman’s own estates were afterwards confiscated, and he then retired to the continent. He was shot by some unknown person as he was going to church at Lausanne. A short time after the house was granted to Sir Bulstrode Whitlock, who resided with his family at Chelsea for some years.

Sir Bulstrode Whitlock was the son of a Judge of the Court of King’s Bench; he wrote a memorial of English affairs from the latter part of the reign of Charles I. to the Restoration.

George, the second Duke of Buckingham, soon after the Restoration, recovered his father’s estates, and was the possessor of this house for a few years, but was soon obliged to dispose of it for the benefit of his creditors.

Dryden, in his poem of Absalom and Achitophel, has drawn the following portrait of this nobleman in the character of Zimri:—

“A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
He’s every thing by starts, and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon,
Was Chymist, Fidler, Statesman, and Buffoon.
In squandering wealth, was his peculiar art,
Nothing went unrewarded but desert.
Beggar’d by fools, when still he found, too late
He had his jest, and they had his estate.”

James Plummer, one of the Duke of Buckingham’s principal creditors, was the person in whose name this house was aliened in 1674, in trust, for George, Earl of Bristol, who is said to have died at Chelsea, and to have been buried in the church, but there is no memorial of him, or entry of his interment in the Parish Register.

George Digby, Earl of Bristol, was born in 1612, and was educated at Oxford; he soon became distinguished by his remarkable advancement in all kinds of elegant literature. In the beginning of the Long Parliament he was disaffected to the Court; shortly afterwards he appeared a declared enemy to the Parliament; and having testified his dislike of their proceedings against Lord Strafford, he was expelled the House of Commons in 1641. Upon the death of the king his lordship was exempted from pardon by the Parliament, and obliged to live in exile till the restoration of Charles II., when he recovered all he had lost; he grew very active in public affairs, spoke frequently in Parliament, and made himself conspicuous for his enmity to Lord Clarendon. Lord Bristol died in 1677, “neither loved nor regretted by any party.” The house at Chelsea he bequeathed to his Countess, Lady Ann Russell, daughter of Francis, Earl of Bedford, who sold it in 1682, to the Marquis of Worcester, created Duke of Beaufort, and who died in 1699.

The name of the house was now changed to Beaufort House. Mr. Evelyn, in his Diary, makes frequent mention of it:—“I went with my Lady Sunderland to Chelsey (1679), and dined with the Countess of Bristol (her mother) in the great house, formerly the Duke of Buckingham’s, a spacious and excellent place for the extent of ground and situation, in a good air. The house is large, but ill-contrived, though my Lord of Bristol expended much money upon it. There were divers pictures of Titian and Vandyke, and some of Bassans, very excellent, especially an Adonis and Venus, a Duke of Venice, a Butcher in his shambles selling meat to a Swiss, and of Van Dyck, my Lord of Bristol’s picture, with the Earl of Bedford’s at length. There was in the garden a rare collection of orange trees, of which she was pleased to bestow some upon me.” Again, in 1683, Mr. Evelyn says, “I went to see what had been done by the Duke of Beaufort on his house at Chelsey; he had made great alterations, but might have made a better house with the materials and the cost he had been at.”

Henry, second Duke of Beaufort, by his will, dated in 1712, left all his estates, in trust, to be sold, and the produce appropriated according to a settlement made at his marriage. The house, however, continued to be the residence of that noble family till about the year 1720. Mary, relict of the first duke, died here in 1714, at the good old age of 85 years.

It may here be observed that Chelsea, not only in former times, but at the present period, 1869, is admitted to be generally a very healthy parish. This assertion is proved by the weekly reports given to the Vestry by Dr. Barclay, the medical officer of health, and which is confirmed by other gentlemen of the medical profession. The reports read at the meetings of the Chelsea Board of Guardians, also, shew that a great many of the inmates of the workhouse live to a very advanced age; and from peculiar facilities I possessed, many years ago, I can positively assert that the number of aged persons, who had for a long period been residents, was greater than in most of the other suburban parishes.

Sir Hans Sloane, after the mansion had stood empty for several years, purchased it in 1736, for the sum of £2,500 at a public sale, and had it pulled down in 1740. The gate, which was built by Inigo Jones for the Lord Treasurer Middlesex, he gave to the Earl of Burlington, who removed it to his gardens at Chiswick, which occasioned the following lines by Pope:—

PASSENGER.

O Gate, how com’st thou here?

GATE.

I was brought from Chelsea last year,
Batter’d with wind and weather;
Inigo Jones put me together;
Sir Hans Sloane,
Let me alone,
Burlington brought me hither.

This gate was placed in an avenue near the house at Chiswick, and consisted of a portico, supported by two columns of the Doric order on one side, and pilasters on the other. On two stone tablets were inscribed: “Builded by Inigo Jones, at Chelsea, MDCXXI.” “Given by Sir Hans Sloane, baronet, to the Earl of Burlington, MDCCXXXVII.”

Bowack thus describes Beaufort House in 1705: “This house is between two and three hundred feet in length, has a stately ancient front towards the Thames, also two spacious court yards, and behind it are very fine gardens. It is so pleasantly situated, that the late Queen Mary had a great desire to purchase it before King William built Kensington, but was prevented by some secret obstacles.”

Attached to the house was a chapel, which appears to have been attended by a few of the inhabitants. In various marriage licenses, granted in 1722, and in other years, persons were to be married in the Parish Church, in the chapel of Chelsea College, or the chapel of Beaufort House.

The above account of this celebrated mansion cannot fail to be highly interesting to the generality of readers. Mr. Faulkner has truly observed, “that few houses can boast of having been the residence of such a succession of noble and distinguished characters.”

Beaufort (row) Street, which was begun to be built about 1766, takes its name from the Duke of Beaufort. A portion of his vast estate was the property of Mr. Long, a very old and respected parishioner, partly leasehold, under Earl Cadogan, and some of it, if not all, is still held by that family.

Battersea Bridge, Sailing Matches, &c.

To meet the tastes of all classes of readers, I shall occasionally deviate from the prescribed order which it was my original intention to have pursued; by doing so it will remove the weariness that frequently arises, especially in works of this description, from dwelling too long on one particular subject. This motive, I trust, will be accepted as an apology for apparent digressions.

There was formerly a Ferry a little eastward of the spot where now stands Battersea Bridge, and consequently not far distant from the distinguished mansion just described. It belonged to Thomas, Earl of Lincoln, who sold it in 1618 to William Blake. After some time it became the property of Sir Walter St. John, and passed with the Bolingbroke estate to Earl Spencer, under whom it was held in 1766, when an Act of Parliament was obtained for building a bridge over the Thames, from Chelsea to Battersea, and empowering Lord Spencer to build the same. Fifteen proprietors having subscribed a sum of money each, it was accordingly begun in 1771, was opened for foot-passengers in the same year, and in the following year was ready for carriages. From 1772, when the bridge was finally erected, to the present time, 1869, is exactly 97 years, and this is the precise age of it. It is a most unsightly structure of wood, about one furlong in length, 28 ft. wide, and its cost rather more than £20,000. The proprietors have a vote for the counties of Middlesex and Surrey.

Lamps were first placed on the bridge in 1799, and in 1821 and 1822 an iron railing 4-ft. high, on the western side, was substituted for the original wooden railing, and in 1824, the eastern side was completed. So far apart were the original wooden railings, which were placed crossways, that the body of a child might have passed through them, and, if not observed, no person cognizant of the fatal accident. There were also, at the above period, eight projecting recesses, four on each side, constructed for the safety of foot-passengers, and a slightly raised pathway made.

The number of lives that have been sacrificed at this bridge, together with the barges sunken at it, even within the last few years, is really painful to contemplate. It is a sad contrast, in every respect, to the elegant structures that now span the river, and it is to be hoped there will soon be erected another one in its place—one that will be an ornament to Chelsea, Battersea, and the metropolis.