Cheyne Cottage was once the Toll Gate for entering Chelsea Parish at the south-west angle—there was another Toll Gate, I think, at the Fulham end of Church Street, but it was probably to this one on the river bank that James Duke of York, afterwards James II., came one winter night a few minutes later than the recognised closing time, eight o’clock. James was unpopular, and the old woman who kept the gate a staunch Protestant, so that to the outriders’ challenge, “Open to the Duke of York!” she shrilled back defiance from her bedroom window, “Be ye Duke or devil, ye don’t enter by this gate after eight of the clock!” and so left James and his coach to lumber on to Whitehall through the bankside mud, as best he might. When I first knew Chelsea, the old board with the toll prices and distances under the Royal arms of Charles II. was preserved at the cottage, but this has, I believe, been surrendered to the London Museum. Lawrence Street, between Cheyne Row and the Old Church, boasts the sponsorship of the Lawrence family, goldsmiths and bankers, whose mansion adjoined the church, and whose business premises leave their name to the group of very old houses immediately west of Church Street. These houses, though actually standing in Cheyne Walk, are called Lombards’ Row in commemoration of the Lawrences’ banking business. Fielding, the novelist, and his brother the Justice lived in the big eighteenth-century house facing Justice Walk, and Tobias Smollett lived close by, in a house now pulled down. In the big garden at the back, impecunious “Sunday men,” whose debts kept them at home on other days, were entertained every week at a “rare good Sunday dinner, all being welcome whatever the state of their coats.” And the Chelsea China Factory existed also at the upper end of Lawrence Street for nearly forty years. Dr. Johnson used to experiment there, having an ambition to excel in a porcelain paste of his own invention, but his composition would not stand the baking process—perhaps he had too weighty a hand in the mixing!—and he gave up the work in disgust. Chelsea china commands enormous prices, as its supply was so limited. So by Justice Walk and a turn to the left down Church Street, we reach the Old Church, the heart of Old Chelsea; a still living, warmly beating heart, after eight centuries. NOTES CHAPTER II The Old Church—Its origin—The new St. Luke’s—Old dedication revived—Henry VIII.’s Marriage to Jane Seymour in the Lawrence Chapel—Princess Elizabeth—The squint and lepers—The plague at Chelsea—The Hungerford memorial—The Bray tomb—Anecdotes of the Rev. R. H. Davies’ incumbency.