The only son of this marriage was Timothy Shelley, the poet's father, who became M.P. for New Shoreham, Co. Sussex. Nine years after his first wife's death, Mr. Bysshe Shelley fixed his affections on another heiress--the heiress of an historic line and an historic estate--Miss Elizabeth Jane Sidney Perry, only daughter and heir of William Perry, Esq., of Turvill Park, Bucks, Wormington, Co. Gloucester, and Penshurst Place, Co. Kent. It is remarkable that an heiress of so bright a lineage and so noble an estate--an heiress who, in descent and fortune, was a fit match for an earl--an heiress lineally descended from the Sidneys, Earls of Leicester--should have lived in singleness to her twenty-ninth year. Perhaps this remarkable fact gave the younger son of the Newark apothecary the requisite courage for a daring exploit. Thirty-eight years old, he was no longer young when he first conceived the purpose of winning so notable an heiress. But though well on in middle age, he had the figure, and face, and audacity, of a youngster. Taking up a position, suitable for his purpose, in a little inn near the Park, celebrated by Jonson's verse, and glorified by the loves of Waller and Saccharissa, he crossed the lady's path in her walks, regarded her worshipfully when she attended the services of Penshurst Church, knelt to her beneath the spreading branches of 'the Lady's Oak.' Is it marvellous that a suitor, so eager and vigilant, so comely and daring, achieved his purpose, notwithstanding the disadvantages of inferior station and growing years? Is it wonderful that the gentlewoman eloped with the suitor, who valued her far more for her broad acres than her descent from the Sidneys? Whatever the motives to the suit, Mr. Bysshe Shelley won, in gallant fashion, the lady by whom he had his second lot of children,--five sons and two daughters. In the year following this marriage, the Newark apothecary was entombed in Warnham Church; and eleven years later (May 1781) Mr. Bysshe Shelley again found himself a widower when he was still in his fiftieth year. Henceforth he devoted himself chiefly to the pursuit of money,--a pursuit in which he was favoured by the death of his childless brother in 1790, when he succeeded to the Fen Place and Field Place estates. The family having come to his hands, he made 'a House' of it. In 1806,--when his little grandson, the future poet, was on the point of going to Eton,--Mr. Bysshe Shelley became Sir Bysshe Shelley, baronet, of Castle Goring; the dignity being the price, with which the Duke of Norfolk rewarded him for former electioneering service, and prepaid him for similar service to be rendered to the Howards and the Whig party to the end of his days. At the date of this social promotion, Sir Bysshe Shelley had already begun to build the egregious Castle which he never finished, though he is said, by the unreliable Medwin, to have spent 80,000_l._ upon it.