Sir Percy Florence Shelley, 3rd Baronet (12 November 1819 – 5 December 1889) was the son and only surviving child of Percy Bysshe Shelley and his second wife, Mary Shelley. He was thus the only grandchild of Mary Wollstonecraft. His middle name, Florence, came because he was born in Florence in Italy[1], as was Florence Nightingale, six months to the day afterwards.
Shelley moved back to England with his mother in 1822, his father having drowned off the Italian coast. He joined Harrow School in Middlesex in 1832, and went up to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1837.[2]
Shelley inherited the baronetcy upon the death of his grandfather in 1844, becoming the 3rd Baronet, of Castle Goring, Sussex. He married Jane Gibson on 22 June 1848, who had previously been married to the Hon. Charles Robert St. 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.[3] 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.[4]
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