Beaufort House (Chelsea)

51°28′59″N 0°10′30″W / 51.483°N 0.175°W / 51.483; -0.175Beaufort House was a grand mansion built beside the River Thames at Chelsea, London, by Thomas More in about 1520, while he held the position of Lord High Chancellor of England to King Henry VIII.

As More's royal duties frequently required his attendance at the king's Thames-side palaces in both Richmond and Greenwich, it was convenient to select a riverside property situated between them (the common method of transport being by boat) for his home.

[2] More moved in by 1525, as is shown by the bawdy poem The Twelve Mery Jestes of Wyddow Edyth, written by a member of More's household (or even by More himself) using the pseudonym of "Walter Smith" and published in March of that year: the widow arrives by boat at "Chelsay[…]where she had best cheare of all/in the house of Syr Thomas More.

After the execution of Fiennes the house passed to Lord Burleigh, Queen Elizabeth's chief minister, to be followed by his youngest son, Sir Robert Cecil, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, who took possession in 1597.

[7] Cecil remodelled the front of the house in 1597, using the designs of architect John Thorpe, but shortly afterwards he sold it to Henry Clinton, 2nd Earl of Lincoln in order to buy property nearer to Westminster.