Montfort. His grandfather, Charles, 2nd Baron Cadogan, had married Elizabeth daughter and co-heiress of Sir Hans Sloane, through whom the Manor of Chelsea came into the Cadogan family. He was born on the 22 January 1751, at Caversham Park near Reading. The following particulars I give, for the most part verbatim, from a Memoir of Cadogan which appeared in the "Evangelical Magazine (January 1798). Rectory of St. Giles', Reading, While he was still at Oxford, the became vacant by the death of Mr. Evangelical preacher was at its height. This was one of the richest livings in the patronage of the Crown, and it happened that the Chancellor, Bathurst, was passing through Reading soon after Mr. Talbot's death. He therefore stopped at Caversham, and as Lord Cadogan was away from home, left a letter for him begging his "condescending acceptance" of the vicarage which he had just heard had become vacant, for his grandson whom he understood was in the Church. Cadogan was not then ordained, but the living was kept for him. The people of Reading heard of the appointment with great grief, but there was no remedy. Their only hope was that the new vicar, being of noble family, he would feel no disposition to do the duties himself, and that their curate continue in his place. With this view, a petition was drawn up, but Cadogan was at that time so inimical to the faith he afterwards preached, and the people who professed it, that he threw the petition into the fire. Had he been indifferent to all religion, he might have been less violent. But he was a Pharisee. His zeal was great, but not according to knowledge. Mrs. Talbot, however, the late vicar's widow, incurred his deepest resentment. She considered it her duty not to remove, as many had, from the spot where her husband's labours had been so signally blest, but to comfort and strengthen the numerous young converts who daily flocked to her for instruction. Like a true mother in Israel, her house was opened for religious exercises, and prayer was continually offered up under her roof for the conversion of Mr. Cadogan. Highly offended at such conduct, he vehemently remonstrated. Various letters passed, but to all his bitter reproaches she returned answers so full of meekness and wisdom, that at length he fell at the feet of accumulated kindness, humbled and subdued, and to the last moment of his life confessed that Mrs. Talbot's letters and example were the principal means of leading him to the saving knowledge of Christ. Soon after his induction to Chelsea he began to expend a large sum of money on the Parsonage there, intending, as it was the genteelest place in and near town, to make it his principal residence. Seeing the Sabbath shamefully violated in Chelsea, and finding the persons that he wished to reclaim would not attend his preaching, he determined to put the law in force against them, and went himself round the parish insisting on having the shops shut, and charging the parish officers to aid him. He found it, however, impossible to accomplish his design; nor could his rank secure him from the abuse and fury of the mob which his zeal had provoked; but his life was more than once endangered by the butchers and others whose traffic he endeavoured to corrupt. Another reform which he introduced was extempore preaching. But at Chelsea, where few of the inhabitants had been used to the Gospel, the alteration was not much approved. But what offended most was the substitution of a Tuesday evening lecture instead of the daily reading of prayers, which he restricted to Wednesdays and Fridays. Grievous complaints were made to the Bishop, but his lordship's interference was silenced by Cadogan's reply to it. The discontented were not so easily appeased. He strove hard to do them good, and his ministry at Chelsea was not without fruit, though it was not, in a comparative view, very successful. At Reading his message was differently received, and the esteem of the congregation bordered on veneration. His family soon perceived that all hopes of his advancement to prelacy would be plucked up by the root unless they could dissuade or pervert him from his new line of conduct. Arguments were ineffectual, and allurements were adopted. He was almost entangled in the snares they laid, when, urged by the anguish of his mind, he suddenly escaped by a marriage, which for a long time produced an entire separation from his family. It is a matter for our regret rather than for surprise, therefore, that he should have been buried at Reading, where there is a monument to him. He died on 18 January 1797. In 1819 the Act was passed, referred to in my first chapter, by which the Old Church was relegated to the status of "the Parish Chapel," provision being made for the nomination of an "Assistant Minister" by the Rector, for the approval of the Patron, and for the payment of such yearly salary "not being less than £250" as the Trustees under the Act should think fit. This stipend is not charged on the Rectory, whose 23 odd acres of glebe have somewhat increased in value since Dr King's time, when they were "sowed with Turnips, Carrots, Beans, Pease and the like," but on the pew rents and rates authorised by the Act. The first Incumbent appointed under the Act was the Rev. John Rush, LL.B., curate to the then Rector, Mr. Wellesley. He died on the 4th June, 1855, aged 85, and is commemorated by a tablet in the chancel. There are several other tablets to members of his family. He was succeeded by my father, the present Incumbent, the Rev. Robert Henry Davies. CHAPTER XII LITTLE CHELSEA In the Kensington Parish Register there is an entry, as early as the 4th September 1618, of the baptism of an inhabitant of "Lytle Chelsey in this p'sh "; the name being applied indifferently to a few houses on either side of the Fulham Road, which divides the two parishes, between Park Walk and Gunter's Grove. The principal house at Little Chelsea was that whose site is now occupied by part of the Workhouses of St. George's Hanover Square, and of which an interesting account is given in Croker's "Walk from London to Fulham." In the pavement of the garden, says Croker, was a stone inscribed with the date 1635; being that of the year following its acquisition by the Boevey family, in whose possession it remained until it was purchased by the Earl of Shaftesbury at the close of the seventeenth century. From a decree in Chancery in 1698 (Roll 1373), and from Mr. A. G. Crawley Boevey's recent book entitled "The Perverse Widow" (Longmans, 1898), I have obtained most of the data following. Andries Boeve, of Courtrai, in Flanders, born in 1566, appears to have been brought to England in 1573, to escape from Alva's persecution. Being settled in the parish of St. Dunstan's-in-the-East, he married for his second wife Joanna, daughter of Peter de Wilde, who, in 1634, was re-married to John Abell, or Abeel. Having a very great estate in money and goods to herself by Andrew Boevey [I adopt the English spelling], the said Joanna being [about] to marry with one Joh: Abell, it was agreed that she should have some great part of her said money goods and personal estate at her own disposition, |