Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 3rd Baronet of Castle Goring was the son and only surviving child of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
Background
His middle name, possibly suggested by his father"s friend Sophia Stacey, came because he was born in Florence. He had two elder half-siblings, by his father"s first marriage, to Harriet Westbrook. His parents lived in Italy for several years, until his father drowned off Livorno, whereupon his mother moved back to England with him, her only surviving child, in 1822.
Education
Harrow School; Trinity College.
Career
He was thus the only grandchild of Mary Wollstonecraft to live beyond infancy. Mary Shelley never re-married. Percy Florence had no further siblings.
He joined Harrow School in 1832, and went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1837.
Charles Robert Saint John, son of the 3rd Viscount Bolingbroke and the Viscountess Bolingbroke, Baroness Hompesch. He was appointed High Sheriff of Sussex in 1865.
The couple had no children, although they adopted Bessie Florence Gibson, the daughter of Edward Gibson who was possibly Jane Gibson"s brother. Bessie Gibson married Lieutenant-Colonel Leopold James Yorke Campbell Scarlett, and was the mother of Shelley, Robert and Hugh Scarlett, the 5th, 6th and 7th Barons Abinger respectively.
He appeared in the "Men of the Day" series in Vanity Fair in 1879 as "The Poet"s Son", a caricature by Ape.
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."
Shelley died in 1889 and was buried in the family vault in the churchyard of Street Peter"s Church, Bournemouth, reputedly with the heart of his father alongside him. A blue plaque was installed, by Bournemouth 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".