Timothy Shelley 2nd Baronet 1753-1844

On 30th June 1752 [his father] Bysshe Shelley 1st Baronet [aged 21] and [his mother] Mary Catherine Michell [aged 18] were married.

On 7th September 1753 Timothy Shelley 2nd Baronet was born to Bysshe Shelley 1st Baronet [aged 22] and Mary Catherine Michell [aged 19].

Before 17th August 1769 [his mother] Mary Catherine Michell [aged 35] died.

On 17th August 1769 [his father] Bysshe Shelley 1st Baronet [aged 38] and Elizabeth Jane Perry were married.

In October 1791 Timothy Shelley 2nd Baronet [aged 38] and Elizabeth Pilfold were married.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE (1792–1822), English poet, was born on the 4th of August 1792 was born at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. He was the eldest child of Timothy Shelley (1753–1844) [aged 38], M.P. for Shoreham, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Charles Pilfold, of Effingham, Surrey. His father was the son and heir of Sir Bysshe Shelley [aged 61], Bart. (d. 1815), whose baronetcy (1806) was a reward from the Whig party for political services. Sir Bysshe's father Timothy had emigrated to America, and he himself had been born in Newark, New Jersey; but he came back to England, and did well for himself by marrying successively two heiresses, the first, the mother of Timothy, being Mary Catherine, daughter of the Rev. Theobald Michell of Horsham. He was a handsome man of enterprising and remarkable character, accumulated a vast fortune, built Castle Goring, and lived in sullen and penurious retirement in his closing years. None of his talent seems to have descended to his son Timothy, who, except for being of a rather oddly self-assertive character, was indistinguishable from the ordinary run of commonplace country squires. The mother of the poet is described as beautiful, and a woman of good abilities, but not with any literary turn; she was an agreeable letter-writer. The branch of the Shelley family to which the poet Percy Bysshe belonged traces its pedigree to Henry Shelley, of Worminghurst, Sussex, who died in 1623. These Worminghurst or Castle Goring Shelleys are of the same stock as the Michelgrove Shelleys, who trace up to Sir William Shelley, judge of the common pleas under Henry VII., thence to a member of parliament in 1415, and to the reign of Edward I., or even to the epoch of the Norman Conquest. The Worminghurst branch was a family of credit, but not of special distinction, until its fortunes culminated under the above-named Sir Bysshe.

On 4th August 1792 [his son] Percy Bysshe Shelley was born to Timothy Shelley 2nd Baronet [aged 38] and [his wife] Elizabeth Pilfold. He married (1) 28th August 1811 Harriet Westbrook and had issue (2) 30th December 1816 Mary Godwin aka Shelley and had issue.

On 15th March 1806 [his son] John Shelley was born to Timothy Shelley 2nd Baronet [aged 52] and [his wife] Elizabeth Pilfold.

1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. After August 1811. [his future daughter-in-law] Harriet Shelley was not only beautiful; she was amiable, accommodating, adequately well educated and well bred. She liked reading, and her reading was not strictly frivolous. But she could not (as [his son] Shelley [aged 18] said at a later date) "feel poetry and understand philosophy." Her attractions were all on the surface; there was (to use a common phrase) "nothing particular in her." For nearly three years Shelley and she led a shifting sort of life upon an income of £400 a year, one-half of which was allowed (after his first severe indignation at the mésalliance was past) by Mr Timothy Shelley [aged 57], and the other half by Mr Westbrook. The couple left Edinburgh for York and the society of Hogg; broke with him upon a charge made by Harriet, and evidently fully believed by Shelley at the time, that, during a temporary absence of his upon business in Sussex, Hogg had tried to seduce her (this quarrel was entirely made up at the end of about a year); moved off to Keswick in Cumberland, where they received kind attentions from Southey [aged 36], and some hospitality from the duke of Norfolk [aged 65], who, as chief magnate in the Shoreham region of Sussex, was at pains to reconcile the father and his too unfilial heir;

On 28th August 1811 [his son] Percy Bysshe Shelley [aged 19] and [his daughter-in-law] Harriet Westbrook were married at Edinburgh having eloped on the 25th August 1811.

On 6th January 1815 [his father] Bysshe Shelley 1st Baronet [aged 83] died. His son Timothy [aged 61] succeeded 2nd Baronet Shelley of Castle Goring in Sussex.

30th December 1816 [his son] Percy Bysshe Shelley [aged 24] and [his daughter-in-law] Mary Godwin aka Shelley [aged 19] were married.

On 8th July 1822 [his son] Percy Bysshe Shelley [aged 29] drowned. He was returning on the Don Juan with Edward Williams from a meeting at Livorno with Leigh Hunt and Byron to make arrangements for a new journal, The Liberal. The boat was sunk is a storm. Shelley's badly decomposed body washed ashore at Viareggio ten days later and was identified by Trelawny from the clothing and a copy of Keats's Lamia in a jacket pocket. On 16th August 1822 his body was cremated on a beach near Viareggio and the ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome. The cremation was attended by George "Lord Byron" 6th Baron Byron [aged 34]. His wife [his daughter-in-law] Mary Godwin aka Shelley [aged 24] did not attend.

On 24th April 1844 Timothy Shelley 2nd Baronet [aged 90] died. His grandson Percy [aged 24] succeeded 3rd Baronet Shelley of Castle Goring in Sussex.