Chelsea

Chelsea, a manor and village on the banks of the Thames. In a Saxon charter of Edward the Confessor it is written "Cealchylle," in Doomsday Book "Cercehede" and "Chelched," and in documents of a later though an early date, "Chelcheth" or "Chelcith." In the City Books a John de Chelse is entered in 1283. Sir Thomas More, writing to King Henry VIII., subscribes his letter "at my pore howse in Chelcith,"² and in his indictment he is described as "Thomas More, nuper de Chelchithe, in comitatu Midd., Miles."³ Norden's etymology is supported by Lysons. "It is so called," he says, "of the nature of the place, whose strand is like the chesel [ceosel or cesol] which the sea casteth up of sand and pebble stones, thereof called Cheselsey, briefly Chelsey, as is Chelsey [Selsey] in Sussex."⁴

The manor is said to have originally formed a part of the possessions of the Abbey at Westminster; but nothing is known with certainty of its history till the time of Henry VII., when it was held by Sir Reginald Bray, from whom it descended to Margaret, only child of his next brother, John, who married William, Lord Sandys. This Lord Sandys gave it in 1536 to Henry VIII., from whom it passed to Katherine Parr, as part of her marriage jointure. It was subsequently held by John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland (d. 1553); by Anne, Duchess of Somerset, widow of the Protector; by John, first Lord Stanhope of Harrington; by Katherine, Lady Howard, wife of the Lord Admiral; by James, first Duke of Hamilton (d. 1649); by Charles, Lord Viscount Cheyne (d. 1698); and by Sir Hans Sloane, (d. 1752), who bought it in 1712 of William, Lord Cheyne, and from whom it passed by marriage and subsequent bequests to Charles Cadogan, second Baron Cadogan of Oakley (d. 1776), having married Elizabeth (d. 1768), daughter and coheir of Sir Hans Sloane. The old Manor House stood near the church, and was parted with by Henry VIII. to the ancestors of the Lawrence family, from whom "Lawrence Street," Chelsea, derives its name. The new Manor House, in which Anne of Cleves died, stood on that part of Cheyne Walk between the "Pier Hotel" and Don Saltero's Coffee-house.

Dr. King, in his MS. account of Chelsea, written about the year 1717, says that the parish then contained 350 houses, and that they had been much increased of late. Bowack, who wrote in 1705, computed their number at 300, being, according to his account, nine times as many as they were in the year 1664. The present number of houses in the parish is about 1350, of which about 1240 are inhabited, the remainder being for the most part unfinished. Lysons, Environs (1795), vol. ii. p. 117.

In 1881 the enumerated population was 88,128. This now extensive parish, at one time the Islington of the west end of London, was famous at first for its Manor House, then for its College [see Chelsea College]; its Botanic Garden; its Hospital for Soldiers [see Chelsea Hospital]; the Royal Military Asylum for Children of Soldiers; the Barracks; its gardens [see Ranelagh Gardens; Cremorne Gardens]; its waterworks [see Chelsea Waterworks]; its buns [see Chelsea Bun House]; its Ladies Boarding Schools, for which it rivalled Hackney at the other end of London;¹ its china and its custards.

When W—— and G—— mighty names are dead
Or but at Chelsea under custards read.—Gay's Trivia.

The new bridge [see Chelsea Bridge] and river embankment [see Chelsea Embankment] are among its more recent distinctions. At Chelsea sat, in 1657, the Sub-Committee on Religion, the principal object of which was the revision of the English version of the Scriptures. The Committee had many meetings, "and had the most learned men in the oriental tongues to consult with," but the inquiry became fruitless by the dissolution of Parliament, February 4, 1658. In Cheyne Walk (facing the river, and so called from the Lords Cheyne, Lords of the Manor²) the Bishops of Winchester had a palace from the time of Dr. George Morley in 1664 to Dr, Brownlow North in 1820. Dr. Richard Willis died in the palace in 1734, Dr. Benjamin Hoadly in 1761, Dr. John Thomas in 1781, and Dr. North in 1820. It was a brick house, built by the Duke of Hamilton, adjoining the Manor House. The site of the house was near the Pier Hotel. Here, in Cheyne Walk, was Don Saltero's Coffee-house. "Beaufort Row" was so called after Beaufort House; "Lindsey Row" from Lindsey House, the residence of the Berties, Earls of Lindsey; "Danvers Street" from Danvers House, the residence of Sir John Danvers, second husband of the mother of George Herbert, and of Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and "Lawrence Street" from Sir John Lawrence (temp. Charles I.) and his descendants. Cremorne House was the villa of Lord Cremorne, and Gough House of Sir John Gough, created a baronet in 1728. Hans Place and Sloane Street were called after Sir Hans Sloane, and Cadogan Place and Oakley Square, after Lord Cadogan of Oakley, Lord of the Manor. The old church (by the water-side) and the new church (in the centre of the parish) are both dedicated to St. Luke. [See St. Luke's, Chelsea.]

Eminent Inhabitants.—Sir Thomas More, from 1520, in a house on the site of what is now "Beaufort Row." Sir Thomas was taken from his house at Chelsea to the Tower on Monday, April 13, 1534. More was very fond of his Chelsea house, where he had abiding with him a full quiver of children and grandchildren—"his son and his son's wife, his three daughters and their three husbands, and eleven grandchildren,"¹ with his library, pictures, garden, and the little menagerie of "strange birds and beasts" he had collected there; and one of the means by which his wife (the nec bella nec puella Alice Middleton) tried to shake his firmness when in the Tower was by enlarging on "his fair house at Chelsea" and "his library, gallery, garden and orchard."

His country-house was at Chelsey, in Middlesex, where Sir John Danvers built his house. The chimney-piece of marble, in Sir John's Chamber, was the chimney- piece of Sir Thomas More's Chamber, as Sir John himself told me. Where the gate is now, adorned with two noble pyramids, there stood anciently a gate-house, which was flatt on the top, leaded, from whence is a most pleasant prospect of the Thames and the fields beyond: on this place the Lord Chancellor More was wont to recreate himself and contemplate.—Aubrey's Lives, vol. iii. p. 462.

And for the pleasure he [Henry VIII.] took in his company would his grace suddenly sometimes come home to his house at Chelsea to be merry with him, whither, on a time unlocked for, he came to dinner, and after dinner, in a fair garden of his walked with him by the space of an hour, holding his arm about his neck.—Roper's Life of More, ed. Singer, p. 21.

Holbein was kindly received by More [late in 1526 or the beginning of 1527] and was taken into his house at Chelsea. There he worked for near three years, drawing the portraits of Sir Thomas More, his relations, and friends.—Walpole's Anecdotes, ed. Dallaway, vol. i. p. 122.

More is said to have converted his house into a prison for the restraint of heretics. Cresacre More tells a story illustrative of this, and Fox relates, in his Martyrology, that he used to bind them to a tree in his garden, called "The Tree of Troth," but this More himself denied. More's house, on his execution, passed with all his possessions to the King, who gave the custody of it to Sir William Paulet, afterwards Marquis of Winchester and Lord Treasurer, who held it on a lease granted by Edward VI. till his death in 1571. His son John, the second Marquis, died here in 1576. It afterwards passed to Gregory, Lord Dacre, whose widow bequeathed it to Lord Burleigh, with remainder to his son, Robert Cecil, "who is supposed to have rebuilt the house,"² which he afterwards sold to Henry Fiennes, Earl of Lincoln. The Earl sold part of his estate here to Sir John Danvers.

June 1618. Earl of Lincoln to Sir Clement Edmondes. Requests him to hasten the delivery to Sir John Danvers of the writings relating to the lands, called Moorhouse, in Chelsea, which he has sold to him.—Cal. State Papers, 1611–1618, p. 548.

Danvers House, taken down about 1696, is one ot the "four houses [which] have contended for the honour of Sir Thomas More's residence,"³ and the above entry seems to support the claim; but Beaufort House has the better title, and we will follow its history to the end. From Lord Lincoln it descended by the marriage of his daughter to Sir Arthur Gorges, who, in 1619, conveyed it to Lionel Lord Cranfield, afterwards Earl of Middlesex and Lord Treasurer, who occupied it till 1625, when he sold it to Charles I. Two years later the King granted it to the Duke of Buckingham, after whose assassination it was occupied by his daughter, the Duchess of Lennox. In 1646 she received permission of Parliament to come here from Oxford to be under the care of Dr. Mayerne. During the Commonwealth it was granted to Bulstrode Whitelocke as an official residence, and he lived here till the Restoration. It then reverted to the second Duke of Buckingham, whose close connection with Chelsea lends additional interest to a sparkling passage in the Rehearsal, in which one of the rival generals heads the array they are to draw together from "the Dominions of the two Kings of Brentford," with "the Chelsey Cuirassiers." Buckingham sold the house in 1664 to the trustees of George Digby, Earl of Bristol, whose widow disposed of it in 1682 to Henry, Marquis of Worcester, afterwards Duke of Beaufort, from whom it was named Beaufort House. It had previously been named Salisbury House and Gorges House. It remained in the possession of the Beaufort family till 1738, when it was purchased by Sir Hans Sloane, who pulled it down in 1740. The gate Sir Hans gave to the Earl of Burlington, who re-erected it in the gardens of his Chiswick villa. The house stood at the north end of Beaufort Row.¹ The site of Danvers House is marked by Danvers Street. Katherine Parr, Queen of Henry VIII., lived here with her second husband, Thomas Seymour, the Lord Admiral, afterwards beheaded; and here, in the same house with them, lived Queen Elizabeth when a girl of thirteen. Anne of Cleves (d. 1557) "at the King and Queen's Majesty's palace of Chelsey beside London."² The beautiful Duchess of Mazarine (niece of the great cardinal) died in difficulties (1699) in a small house which she rented of Lord Cheyne.³ St. Evremond constantly visited her there. In his Works he praises the fine air of Chelsea. The Duchess always walked home from town, whether late or early.⁴ Lysons had heard that it was usual for the nobility and others who dined at her house to leave money under their plates to pay for their entertainment.⁵ Bishop Fletcher, father of the great dramatic poet, when living here in 1592, was honoured by a visit from Queen Elizabeth, and here his first wife, the poet's mother, and a daughter were buried. Anthony Bacon, brother of Lord Bacon, appears to have been living here in 1595. John Lord Robartes, afterwards Earl of Radnor, Lord Privy Seal.

September 30, 1661.—We took coach to Chelsy, to my Lord Privy Seale, and there got him to seal the business. Here I saw by daylight two very fine pictures in the gallery, that a little while ago I saw by night; and did also go all over the house, and found it to be the prettiest contrived house that ever I saw in my life.—Pepys.

Earl of Shaftesbury, author of the Characteristics, from 1699 to 1710, in a house in "Little Chelsea," now an additional workhouse to the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square. John Pym, the parliamentary statesman, lived here during the Civil War. Sir Robert Walpole, "next the College," adjoining Gough House.

The Right Honorable Robert Walpole, Esq., has purchased the late Heer Van Halse's house at Chelsea for £1100.—The Post Boy, September 29. October 2, 1722.

About the year 1722 Sir Robert Walpole became possessed of a house and garden in the stable-yard at Chelsea. Sir Robert frequently resided there, improved and added to the house, considerably enlarged the gardens by a purchase of some land from the Gough family, built the octagon summer-house at the head of the terrace, and a large greenhouse where he had a fine collection of exotics. After Sir Robert Walpole's death the house was sold to the Earl of Dunmore, of whose executors it was purchased by George Aufrere, Esq., the present proprietor.—Lysons, vol. ii. p. 91.

The house and garden were held on a lease from the Crown, subject to the payment of £12 : 10s. per annum.¹ The minister Duke of Newcastle afterwards lived in this house.

August 5, 1746.—I went t'other night to look at my poor favourite Chelsea, for the little Newcastle is gone to be dipped in the sea. In one of the rooms is a bed for her Duke, and a press-bed for his footman; for he never dares lie alone, and till he was married had always a servant to sit up with him.—Walpole to Montagu {Letters, vol. ii. p. 45).

Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, in Church Lane.² In April 1711 Dean Swift took lodgings "over against Dr. Atterbury," and paid "six shillings a week for one silly room, with confounded coarse sheets." The "stage-coach" took him and his man Patrick and his portmanteau from Bury Street for sixpence. On one occasion he mentions that "it rains hard and the cunning natives of Chelsea have outwitted me, and taken up all the three stage-coaches. What shall I do?" His usual mode of travelling is described in the following extract:

May 15, 1710.—My way is this: I leave my best gown and periwig at Mrs. Vanhomrigh's [in Suffolk Street], then walk up the Pall Mall, through the Park, out at Buckingham House, and so to Chelsea a little beyond the church. I set out about sunset, and get here in something less than an hour: it is two good miles, and just 5748 steps.—Swift, Journal to Stella.

It was at Chelsea that the intimacy between Atterbury and Swift commenced. Arbuthnot removed to Chelsea in 1714. Shadwell, the poet-laureate and hero of MacFlecknoe, resided for many years in Chelsea, and his son, Sir John Shadwell, succeeded Arbuthnot in his Chelsea House. Chelsea seems to have been in favour with physicians as a place of residence. Sir Theodore Mayerne, physician to Charles I., and the first practitioner of his day, perhaps set the example by building himself a house here and making it his chief abode. The house was afterwards Lord Lindsey's, and came to be known as Lindsey House. Bowack, writing in 1705, says that "during the last twenty or thirty years so many families and schools have gone there for the sweetness of the air, that from a small straggling village 'tis become a large, beautiful, and populous town, having about three hundred houses, and about that number of families, some of whom are very great, which is over nine times its number in 1664." Sir Isaac Newton lived in Chelsea from October 1709 to September 1710, the twelve months which intervened between his quitting Jermyn Street and his taking the house in St. Martin's Street. Addison had a country-house near Chelsea in 1710. Sir Richard Steele, 1714–1715, in a house by the water-side, for which he paid £14 a year. Abel Boyer, of the Postboy', died here in 1729. Dr. Hoadly, author of The Suspicious Husband (d. 1757), in a house adjoining Cremorne House. Tobias Smollett, in Monmouth House at the upper end of Lawrence Street, now destroyed. Here he has laid a scene in Humphry Clinker.¹ The house owed its name to having been the residence of the Duchess of Monmouth, widow of the unfortunate son of Charles II. Collins, the poet, was confined in "Mr. Donald's madhouse at Chelsea " before he was finally removed to Chichester in 1754. Mrs. Blackwell lived in a house opposite the Botanic Garden whilst collecting materials for, and writing her once famous Herbal. Dr. Edward Chamberlayne, author of the Present State of Great Britain. Sir Hans Sloane retired here with his library and collections in 1742, and here died in 1753. [See St. Luke's, Chelsea.] Henry Sampson Woodfall, the printer and publisher of the Public Advertiser, now best known in connection with the publication of the Letters of Junius, lived here from 1796 to his death in 1805. Matthew Davenport Hill, Recorder of Birmingham from 1822 to 1827, in a cottage near the old church, long since swept away; and at the same time in lodgings close by Thomas de Quincey, author of Confessions of an Opium-Eater. Thomas Carlyle in Cheyne Row [which see.] The china works referred to above flourished during the reign of George II., by whom and by his queen they were much patronised. The Chelsea ware is of a remarkably fine kind and greatly prized by collectors. The claret-coloured vases and bleu de roi and oriental blue and white pieces fetch high prices. The manufactory was established about 1745, but was only continued for a few years. The business was purchased by Mr. W. Duesbury of Derby, who transferred it to that town, and in 1784 the buildings were pulled down. Chelsea, with the parishes of Fulham, Hammersmith, and Kensington, was, by the Reform Act of 1867, created a parliamentary borough, returning two members to the House of Commons. By the Act of 1885 Chelsea returns one member alone. Chelsea is now to a great extent being rebuilt, chiefly in imitation of the so-called architecture of the early part of the 18th century. The Chelsea Embankment was opened in May 1874, and from that time to this building operations have been vigorously carried on. A large number of important houses have been built by the riverside, and some of the latest of these buildings are the flats styled Carlyle Mansions, and erected in 1887.

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² Ellis's Letters (First Series), vol. ii. p. 52.
³ Archaologia, 1838.
⁴ Speculum Britannia, Middlesex, p. 17. The Chesil Bank, off the Isle of Portland, is from the same root. So Taylor, Words and Places, pp. 280, 348, "Chelsea is a corruption of Chesel-ey, or shingle isle." But there is really no authority for supposing the place to have been an island. It is much more probable that it was one of the tythes or havens so common on the banks of the Thames.

¹ The scene of D'Urfey's Love for Money, or t!ie Boarding School, is laid "at Chelsea, near the River."
² Mrs. Chauvin, who kept a French Boarding School at Little Chelsea, is moved and settled in my Lord Cheyne's Mansion House in Great
Chelsea.—London Gazette, July 3–6, 1704.

¹ Southey. Colloquies, vol. i. p. 125; Erasmus Epist. 1506.
² Lysons, vol. ii. p. 56.
³ Ibid, vol. ii. p. 58.

¹ Lysons, vol. ii. p. 58.
² Funeral Certificate in Heralds' College.
³ Miss Hawkins in her Memoirs (vol. i. p. 28), says that she lived in Lindsey House.
⁴ St. Evremond, Works, vol. ii. p. 338.
⁵ Lysons, vol. ii. p. 177, and vol. iii. p. 628.

¹ Sale Catalogue of Sir Robert's house and effects at Chelsea.—Lysons, vol. ii. p. 133.

¹ There is an engraving of the house m Smith's Antiquarian Curiosities.