'The house,' which Lady Shelley regards as having been merely enriched by the fortunate marriages that created it, was a curiously vagrant family for a house 'holding a high position among the large landholders of Sussex.' Leaving Worminghurst, Co. Sussex, on the demise of Henry Shelley ('esq.,' as he is described in the official pedigree), who died there in 1623, the house moved to Ichingfield, in the time of Richard Shelley ('gent.,' as he is modestly defined in the same genealogical chart). Under the government of John Shelley, 'esq.,' who died in 1673, the house rested at Thakeham, whence it migrated to Fen Place, in the parish of Worth, Co. Sussex, on the marriage, in 1692, of John Shelley (of Fen Place, _jure uxoris_, Co. Sussex, esq.), with Hellen, younger of the two daughters and co-heirs of Roger Bysshe, of Fen Place, aforesaid. Of the eight children of this marriage, the reader of the present work is invited to take notice of no more than two, John Shelley, the second, and Timothy Shelley, the third son. Born at Worth in 1696, this last-named John Shelley, who died in 1772 at Uckfield, is handed down to all future time by the pedigree as 'an esquire and lunatic.' That there was a strain of insanity in the Castle-Goring Shelleys is a matter to be borne in mind by those who are interested in the poet and his nearest kindred. Percy Bysshe was great-great-nephew of this lunatic, and great-grandson of the lunatic's brother, Timothy, of whom further mention must be made.