Family and Education

b. c.1650, s. of Robert Chaundler of Idmiston, Wilts.  educ. I. Temple 1661; Trinity Oxf. matric. 23 Mar. 1666, aged 16.  m. (1) 23 Feb. 1670, Mary (d.1680), da. of John Palmer, MD, warden of All Souls, Oxf., 2s. d.v.p. 2 da. (1 d.v.p.) 4 other ch. d.v.p.; (2) lic. 15 Sept. 1682, Barbara (d. 1698), wid. of Sir Walter Curle, 1st Bt., of Soberton, Hants; (3) 21 Oct. 1700, Catherine Hobbs.1

Offices Held

Sheriff, Wilts. 1686–7; freeman, Wilton by 1692; Winchester by 1701; Lymington 1701, mayor 1706.2

Biography

The son of a minor Wiltshire landowner, Chaundler gave favourable replies to King James’s ‘three questions’ on the repeal of the Test Act and Penal Laws, and in June 1688 was made a deputy-lieutenant for Wiltshire. Some time before 1701 he bought the estate of Cams in Hampshire and began to enjoy the patronage of the 2nd Duke of Bolton (Charles Powlett I*). He was returned for Hampshire in both the elections of 1701, with Bolton’s support, and was classed as a Whig in Robert Harley’s* list of December 1701. At the general election of 1702 he transferred to the Cornish borough of St. Ives, where Bolton had an interest, only to be unseated on petition by a Tory opponent in December that year.3

Chaundler stood successfully for Hampshire in 1705 and was classed as a ‘Churchman’ in a list of the new Parliament and as a gain for the Whigs by Lord Sunderland (Charles, Lord Spencer*). He duly voted for the Court candidate and fellow Hampshire Whig John Smith I* in the division on the Speaker, 25 Oct. 1705, but otherwise took little part in parliamentary activities. He was twice listed as a Whig in 1708, and at the general election of that year was returned for Lymington, where Bolton shared the representation with a local family, the Burrards. Chaundler supported the naturalization of the Palatines in 1709, and voted for the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell in 1710. He did not sit in Parliament again under Queen Anne, possibly because in the next two elections Bolton was hard pressed by the Tories and could not find him a seat. Returning to the Commons for Lymington in 1715, he continued to support the Whigs. He died in 1729, his will being proved in September of that year.4

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: Paula Watson

Notes

• 1. Hoare, Wilts. Alderbury, v. 66; Wilts. N. and Q. vi. 99; Wood, Life and Times, i. 306–7; ii. 151.
• 2. Pembroke mss at Wilton House, list of burgesses, 1 Oct. 1692; Hants RO, Winchester bor. recs. ordnance bk. 7, f. 166; E. King, Old Times Revisited, Lymington, 184, 192.
• 3. Duckett, Penal Laws and Test Act (1882), 214, 228; VCH Hants, iii. 214; Surr. RO (Kingston), Somers mss 01/1, Mrs Burnet to Lady Jekyll, [c.Nov. 1701].
• 4. PCC 242 Abbott.