Sir Percy Shelley Bt JP DL
Born	Percy Florence Shelley 12 November 1819 Florence,Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Died	5 December 1889(1889-12-05) (aged 70)
Education	Harrow School Trinity College, Cambridge
Title	3rd Baronet of Castle Goring
Spouse	Jane Gibson ​ (m. 1848)​
Children	Bessie Florence Gibson (adopted)
Parent(s)	Percy Bysshe Shelley Mary Shelley

Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 3rd Baronet (12 November 1819 – 5 December 1889), was the son of the English writer and poetPercy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife,Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, novelist and author ofFrankenstein. He was the only child of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley to live beyond infancy. His middle name, possibly suggested by his father's friendSophia Stacey, came from the city of his birth,Florence in Italy. He had two elder half-siblings, by his father's first marriage to Harriet Westbrook, and three full siblings who died in infancy.

Shelley was born as the fourth child of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, his namesake, and his wife, author Mary Shelley. His elder siblings, consisting of a premature girl who died at a few weeks old and a brother and a sister who died in childhood, left him as the only surviving child after his mother suffered a miscarriage in 1822.

His parents lived in Italy for several years, until his father drowned nearLivorno (then known to the English as Leghorn), whereupon his mother moved back to England with him. Mary Shelley never remarried; Percy had no further siblings. He joinedHarrow School in 1832, and went up toTrinity College, Cambridge, in October 1837.^[1]

Shelley inherited theShelley baronetcy upon the death of his grandfather,Timothy Shelley, in 1844, becoming the 3rd Baronet, ofCastle Goring, Sussex. In 1845, giving his address asPutney (then a riverside village inSurrey just upstream ofClapham), he was elected to theRoyal Thames Yacht Club.^[2]

On 22 June 1848, he married Jane Gibson, one of nine illegitimate children of Thomas Gibson, a wealthyNewcastle banker, by Ann Shevill;^[3][4] Jane was the widow of the Hon. Charles Robert St. John, son of the3rd Viscount Bolingbroke and the Viscountess Bolingbroke, Baroness Hompesch. The couple had no children, although they adopted Jane's niece, Bessie Florence Gibson, the youngest child of Jane's brother^[5] Edward Gibson.^[6][7] Bessie Gibson married Lieutenant-Colonel Leopold James Yorke Campbell Scarlett (grandson of the1st Baron Abinger, a politician and judge),^[6] and was the mother ofShelley,Robert andHugh Scarlett, the 5th, 6th and 7thbarons Abinger respectively.^[6]

In 1849, Shelley purchasedBoscombe Manor, and carried out major building and alteration works between about 1850 and 1879. Around 1850, he built a temporary theatre in the garden but replaced this with a permanent internal theatre room in 1866.^[8]

He was appointedHigh Sheriff of Sussex in 1865. According toYachting World, Shelley was a member of the prestigious and exclusiveRoyal Yacht Squadron atCowes on theIsle of Wight.^[9]

Shelley died 5 December 1889 at Bournemouth,^[10] and was buried in the family vault in the churchyard ofSt Peter's Church, Bournemouth, reputedly with the heart of his father alongside him. In that vault, in addition to the patrilineal family, lie the remains of his maternal grandparents, namelyMary Wollstonecraft andWilliam Godwin; Shelley and his wife were instrumental in moving their bones fromSt Pancras Old Church in London. The Shelley baronetcy passed to his first cousin,Edward Shelley (1827–1890), of Avington House, Hampshire, a Captain in the16th Lancers, son of John Shelley (1806–1866),JP,DL, of Avington House,High Sheriff of Hampshire in 1853,^[11] the younger brother ofPercy Bysshe Shelley.^[12]

Shelley appeared in the 'Men of the Day' series inVanity Fair in 1879 as "The Poet's Son", a caricature by "Ape",Carlo Pellegrini. The caption reads: "But he delights above all in yachting and in private theatricals, and is even now engaged in building a theatre for amateur performers. He is a gentleman."^[13] HisLondon house he fitted with a private theatre; this was inTite Street, Chelsea, a favoured and fashionable location for people of an artistic and literary disposition, according toThe London Encyclopedia.^[14] While it was occupied by him and used for private performances, it caused no trouble. During a later period, however, it was rented to a tenant that used the facility for charity fund-raising performances where tickets were publicly sold, thus contravening the local bylaws.

Sir Percy also, with others, in Boscombe, Bournemouth, paid for a school to be built, and signed an Indenture with them, dated 2 October 1879, which stated that the school was to remain "...a schoolhouse and all other buildings hereafter to be erected thereon to be forever after appropriated and used as and for a school for the education of children and adults or children only of the manufacturing trading labouring and or other poorer classes residing in the parish of Christchurch and adjoining and neighbouring parishes and places...or as near thereto as circumstances will then permit."

In 1960, a local teacher, Leslie Williams, formed the Bournemouth Children's Theatre in the old school buildings, which later became the Drama Centre. DameSybil Thorndike became the patron of the centre and visited frequently. In the 1980s the Drama Centre was renamed the Bournemouth Centre for Community Arts (BCCA) to reflect its extension into other arts.Gareth Malone, later a choirmaster on BBC television programmes, attended. Despite protests from residents, Bournemouth Council demolished the building, other than two rooms. Residents raised money for ablue plaque to be placed on the two remaining rooms, to commemorate Sir Percy laying the foundation stone.^[15]

Ablue plaque was installed, byBournemouth Borough Council, on 30 June 1985, in honour of Shelley, at the entrance to his former home Boscombe Manor, now the Shelley Manor Medical Centre.^[16]

Robert Louis Stevenson dedicated his novelThe Master of Ballantrae to Florence Shelley and his wife.^[17]

• 1819 births
• 1889 deaths
• 19th-century English people
• People from Florence
• People educated at Harrow School
• Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge
• Godwin family
• High sheriffs of Sussex
• Shelley baronets, of Castle Goring
• Burials at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth

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