monarch, in giving the land for the hospital, made a pretty good thing of it for himself! There had been already a building on the ground, then nearly in ruins, the foundation walls of which may still be seen in the cellar of the chaplain’s house. This was King James’s aborted College for polemic divinity—“A Colledge of Divines and other Learned Men at Chelsey”—nicknamed “Controversy College,” and intended to be “a spiritual garrison, with a magazine of all books.” It was a failure. Nobody would subscribe, for every man was giving his money, at this time, to repair St. Paul’s, and to help Sir Hugh Myddleton bring the New River into London; and only one-eighth of the plan was ever carried out. The Royal Society used the building for a while; in one of its out-houses Prince Rupert invented the drops, which, in Macaulay’s words, “have long amused children and puzzled philosophers”; and by which, absurdly enough, his name is still kept alive; albeit his is a memorable figure, gallant in battle, ardent in love, devoted in science. When he laid down the rapier for the retort, the broadsword for the blowpipe, he pursued chemistry even as he had pursued the flying Roundheads at Edge Hill, with equal ardour here on the quiet shore at Chelsea, far from the court and the crowd. Later, the buildings, falling to pieces, were used even in 1653, along with barges moored on the river front, as a prison for the Dutch taken in the war. Grave John Evelyn, one of the four Commissioners in control of all prisoners of war—he had rode with Rupert as a volunteer—comes to visit his charges on Ash Wednesday, 1665, and notes: “They only complained that their bread was too fine!”