Chelsea in the olden & present times / by George Bryan.

  • Bryan, George.
Date:
1869
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chelsea in the olden & present times / by George Bryan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    churchyard of Chelsea, in the same vault with his lady. His funeral was attended by many persons of distinction, and several Fellows of the Royal Society. He has been styled “ the father of natural history in these realms.” Sir Hans Sloane’s invaluable Museum, sold to the nation at his decease for ;^2o,ooo, being about a fourth of its value, was the nucleus, and so far the first foundation, of the British Museum. He bequeathed one moiety of the manor of Chelsea to his daughter Sarah, the wife of George Stanley, Esq., of Paultons, in Hampshire, and the remainder to his second daughter, the lady of Charles Lord Cadogan, in which family the property still remains. Hence the names of Cheyne Walk, Hans Place, Sloane Street, Cadogan Place, Oakley Street, and Paultons Square. The eldest son of Earl Cadogan takes his father’s second title. Viscount Chelsea. Mrs. Stanley, daughter of Sir Hans Sloane, left one son and two daughters ; Hans Stanley, Esq., the son, who died in 1780, and bequeathed to his sisters, Anne, the wife of W. Ellis, Esq., aftenvards Lord Mendip, and Sarah, the wife of Christopher D’Oyley, Esq., his moiety of this manor, with the reversion to Lord Cadogan and his heirs. 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