Chauncy Hare Townshend

Chauncy Hare Townshend, born Chauncy Hare Townsend (10 April 1798, Godalming, Surrey – 25 February 1868) was a 19th century English poet, clergyman, mesmerist, collector, dilettante and hypochondriac. He is mostly remembered for bequeathing his collections to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) and the Wisbech & Fenland Museum in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. He added an 'h' to his surname in 1835, upon inheriting. Townshend was the only son of Henry Hare Townsend, whose maternal grandfather was Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine, and whose father (and thus Chauncy's grandfather) was James Townsend M.P., Lord Mayor of London from 1772 – 1773. They were a wealthy family, with lands in Norfolk, London and Switzerland,...