Old Chelsea Church is familiar to every Londoner who goes up the river in a steamboat or a wherry. Its massive square tower, its red-tiled roofs, its external monuments in the bit of green churchyard, the dusky glow of its old brick, and its general aspect of having been entirely neglected by the restorers, attract attention, and to a great extent reward it. The edifice cannot be reckoned among the most beautiful specimens of ecclesiastical architecture in London; yet its appearance is venerable and interesting, and its associations might furnish matter for a whole chapter, or even for a book. The chancel is said to have been rebuilt in the early part of the sixteenth century, and the chapel at the east end of the south aisle was erected by Sir Thomas More. The date of this chapel is about 1520; the tower of the church belongs to the reign of Charles II.; and the building generally stands on the site of one which antiquarians refer to the beginning of the fourteenth century, and of which some portions still remain. The body of More (minus the head) is stated by Aubrey to have been interred in "Chelsey Church, neer the middle of the south wall;" but this is doubtful. At the place indicated, however--which is about the spot where he used to sit among the choir, and where he erected a tomb for himself during his lifetime--a tablet of black marble yet appears to his memory. More is the presiding deity of Chelsea. His house was not far from the church, in a north-westerly direction; and here he was visited by Holbein, who painted his portrait, and by Henry VIII., who on one occasion walked with him in the garden for the space of an hour, "holding his arm about his neck," as his son-in-law Roper relates--the same neck which he afterwards caused to be divided by the headsman's axe. Many persons of eminence, especially in connection with literature and science, lie buried in Chelsea Old Church, or in the adjoining graveyard; and the passer-by almost brushes against the urn, entwined with serpents, which marks the resting-place of Sir Hans Sloane. At the north side of the church is the grave of John Anthony Cavallier, the leader of the Camisards, a body of Protestants in the Cevennes, who, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, carried on a religious war in which Louis XIV. lost ten thousand of his best troops. Cavallier ultimately escaped to England, entered the British service, was for a time Lieutenant-Governor of Jersey, and died at Chelsea in 1740.