Boyle’s sister, the puritanical Countess of Warwick, under date 27th November, 1666, makes the following note: “In the morning, as soon as dressed, I prayed, then went with my lord to my house at Chelsea, which he had hired, where I was all that day taken up with business about my house.” [112] Whether this refers to Little Chelsea or not is more than I can affirm, although there are reasons for thinking that Shaftesbury House, or, if not, one which will be subsequently pointed out, is the house alluded to.
Charles, the fourth Earl of Orrery, and grand-nephew to Boyle the philosopher, was born at Dr. Whittaker’s house at Little Chelsea on the 21st July, 1674. It was his grandfather’s marriage with Lady Margaret Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, that induced the witty Sir John Suckling to write his well-known ‘Ballad upon a Wedding,’ in which he so lusciously describes the bride:—
“Her cheeks so rare a white was on,
No daisie makes comparison;
Who sees them is undone;
For streaks of red were mingled there,
Such as are on the Cath’rine pear—
The side that’s next the sun.“Her lips were red; and one was thin,
Compared to that was next her chin—
Some bee had stung it newly;
But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face,
I durst no more upon her gaze,
Than on the sun in July.”
The second Earl of Orrery, this lady’s son, having married Lady Mary Sackville, daughter of the Earl of Dorset, is stated to have led a secluded life at Little Chelsea, and to have died in 1682. His eldest son, the third earl, died in 1703, and his brother, mentioned above as born at Little Chelsea, became the fourth earl, and distinguished himself in the military, scientific, and literary proceedings of his times. In compliment to this Lord Orrery’s patronage, Graham, an ingenious watchmaker, named after his lordship a piece of mechanism which exhibits the movements of the heavenly bodies. With his brother’s death, however, in 1703, at Earl’s Court, Kensington, the connection of the Boyle family with this neighbourhood appears to terminate.
Doctor Baldwin Hamey, an eminent medical practitioner during the time of the Commonwealth, and a considerable benefactor to the College of Physicians, died at Little Chelsea on the 14th of May, 1676, after an honourable retirement from his professional duties of more than ten years.
Mr. Faulkner’s ‘History of Kensington,’ published in 1820, and in which parish the portion of Little Chelsea on the north side of the Fulham Road stands, mentions the residence of Sir Bartholomew Shower, an eminent lawyer, in 1693; Sir Edward Ward, lord chief baron of the Exchequer, in 1697; Edward Fowler, lord bishop of Gloucester, in 1709, who died at his house here on the 26th August, 1714; and Sir William Dawes, lord bishop of Chester, in 1709, who, I may add, died Archbishop of York in 1724. But in Mr. Faulkner’s ‘History of
Chelsea,’ published in 1829, nothing more is to be found respecting Sir Bartholomew Shower than that he was engaged in some parochial law proceedings in 1691. Sir Edward Ward’s residence is unnoticed. The Bishop of Gloucester, who is said to have been a devout believer in fairies and witchcraft, is enumerated among the inhabitants of Paradise Row, Chelsea (near the hospital, and full a mile distant from le petit Chelsey); and Sir William Dawes, we find from various entries, an inhabitant of the parish between the years 1696 and 1712, but without “a local habitation” being assigned to him. All this is very unsatisfactory to any one whose appetite craves after map-like accuracy in parish affairs.
Bowack, in 1705, mentions that
“At Little Chelsea stands a regular handsome house, with a noble courtyard and good gardens, built by Mr. Mart, now inhabited by Sir John Cope, Bart., a gentleman of an ancient and honourable family, who formerly was eminent in the service of his country abroad, and for many years of late in Parliament, till he voluntarily retired here to end his days in peace.”
And here Sir John Cope died in 1721. Can he have been the father of the