A road-book to old Chelsea

by G. B. Stuart

Standing in the middle aisle, the beauty of the pulpit carving must strike every lover of oak, and it is inspiring to think that a broad-minded Chelsea rector, the Hon. and Rev. W. B. Cadogan, invited John Wesley and Whitfield to occupy it. The canopy of the pulpit has been lost, but from wood once part of the “three-decker” structure, the chairs have been fashioned which stand by the altar; the font-cover of oak was found in 1910 in a neglected corner of the tower, and with it two handsome Georgian pewter alms dishes dated 1754; these have been restored to use for Sunday collections. Among the hatchments, many of which remain unidentified, that of Rector Cadogan has been recognised with its motto “Christ, the Hope of Glory”; he died in 1797.

On the pillar north of the pulpit hangs the tablet of the clever and eccentric Dr. Baldwin Hamey, who retired from medical practice in 1665 and came to live at Chelsea. He gave liberally to the church restoration fund—perhaps influenced by Lady Jane Cheyne’s enthusiasm—but as a scientist he was intolerant of dogma, and used to carry a leather-bound Virgil to church with him, which passed for a Testament, and saved him from the tedium of listening to doctrine to which he did not conform. He was buried, uncoffined and merely wrapped in a sheet, in the chancel, and his epitaph is a hopeless one, “When the breath goeth out of a Man, he returneth to his Earth,” but later, in 1880, the Royal College of Physicians restored his tablet “in grateful remembrance of their benefactor,” and in spite of the declared pessimism of his creed, his good work is not “interred with his bones,” but lives in the kindly worded remembrance of his scientific brotherhood.

On the opposite pillar (south side) a tiny figure of St. Luke, “the doctor’s saint,” stands on a bracket; it formerly decorated the canopy of the pulpit. It was contributed by John Fletcher—Dr. Hamey’s servant and assistant—to the ornamentation of the church at its restoration in 1667, when the “beloved physician” was still patron of the parish. No one has ever satisfactorily explained why, for 300 years, the old dedication to All Saints was in abeyance, and St. Luke was substituted; perhaps at the Reformation St. Luke, the man of science, was considered a more suitable patron for the Church of the New Learning.

The stones and inscriptions on the floor of the church show that many Chelsea people lie beneath. Sometimes the scrutiny of names leads to considerable enlightenment of family and local history, but for Chelsea’s visitors this study has no special attraction, so we will not burden them with pavement inscriptions. From a corner between the More Chapel and the nave, nine leaden coffins were removed about forty years ago, when the heating of the church necessitated new stove-pipes. These coffins were supposed to belong to the More family, and may have enclosed the bodies of Will and Margaret Roper, of “Mistress More,” the Chancellor’s second wife, and of Bishop Fisher, but their identification was uncertain. They were removed to the Parish Church in Sydney Street and privately re-interred.

The chained books under the south window are a more cheerful reminder of Tudor times, and of Henry VIII.’s decree of a Parish Church Bible, though these are not the original sixteenth-century volumes, but a later set presented by Sir Hans Sloane. They consist of:

A “Vinegar” Bible (Baskett’s edition, dated 1717).

The Book of Common Prayer, 1723.

The Book of Homilies (2 volumes) formerly belonging to Trelawny, the great Bishop of Winchester, 1683.

Two volumes (Nos. I. and III.) of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. A very fine edition dated 1684.

Tradition connects these two volumes of Foxe with Charles II., who died in the year 1685. It is possible, though no history of the books records the fact as certain, that they were the King’s property, given or lent to his physician; we love royal tradition in Chelsea, and there is nothing against our adopting this one.