Family and Education

b. c.1680, 2nd s. of John Chetwynd, M.P., of Ingestre by Lucy, da. of Robert Roane of Tolhurst Farm, Surr.; bro. of Walter and William Richard Chetwynd, 1st and 3rd Viscts. Chetwynd [I]. m. c.1716, Esther, 2s. d.v.p. 2da. suc. bro. Walter as 2nd Visct. 21 Feb. 1736.

Offices Held

Sec. to the Duke of Manchester at Paris 1699-1701; receiver gen. for the duchy of Lancaster 1702-18; sec. Turin c.1703-6; envoy, Turin 1706-10; ld. of Trade 1714-28; envoy, Spain 1717-8; recorder, Stafford 1725; high steward, Stafford 1736-d.

Biography

John Chetwynd began his career as a diplomatist, serving at Turin during the war of the Spanish succession; was present at the siege of Toulon; and embarked with an expedition to Catalonia on his way back to England in 1710. After his return from Turin he was for several years responsible for the payments made to the Vaudois Protestants.1

At George I’s accession Chetwynd was appointed to the board of Trade, according to Lady Cowper,

by Madame Kielmansegge’s interest, he having given her ... five hundred guineas down, and is to pay her two hundred pounds per annum as long as he has that place; and I have since learnt from another hand that he gave her also the fine brilliant earrings which she wears, it being certain she never had any such jewels abroad.2

Brought into Parliament by the Government in 1715, he went to Spain in 1717 on a special mission connected with the commercial treaty then under negotiation.3 He spoke for the bill repealing the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts in 1719. In 1722 he was returned for Stockbridge, near his house at Fullerton, on a joint interest with Martin Bladen, a fellow member of the board.4

At George II’s accession, when Chetwynd’s brothers were dismissed, he himself was at first re-appointed, but on 24 May 1728 Newcastle wrote that ‘a vacancy is, by the King’s express order, made in the board of Trade, by removing Jack Chetwynd and putting in Sir Thomas Frankland’. He thereupon followed his brothers into opposition. On 10 Mar. 1730 he moved

a long question, for asserting his Majesty’s interest, and undoubted right to the islands of St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Dominico ... This question, after the mighty expectations that have been raised in the house in general, filled with strangers to see the result of the great attack supposed to have been intended on the ministry, was treated with great contempt and ridicule.5

In 1732 he spoke for voiding the sale of the Derwentwater estates.6 He did not stand in 1734, but was returned on his family’s interest for Stafford in 1738, voting with the Opposition except on the motion of 1741 for Walpole’s removal, when he withdrew.

After Walpole’s fall Chetwynd continued for some time in opposition, closely associated with Lord Gower, the head of another great Staffordshire family, voting against the Administration except on a motion for rejecting the Address in December 1743.7 On the formation of the Broadbottom Administration at the end of 1744 he went over to the Government with his brothers and Lord Gower, and was classed as one of the ‘New Allies’ of the Administration. In 1747 he withdrew from Parliament.

On 16 Apr. 1755 Chetwynd wrote to the King

to renew the Earl Gower’s request to your Majesty on my behalf for a British peerage, founded upon his lordship’s repeated assurances of the favourable manner in which your Majesty was pleased to receive his applications, and your Majesty’s most gracious order, that his lordship should remind your Majesty of me whenever a new creation of peers might be.

He continued:

I have served the Crown upwards of 50 years, ... I had the good fortune in the year 1745 to be of singular service to his Royal Highness the Duke and the army under his command in Staffordshire and to have my zeal on that occasion approved by your Majesty. The same zeal Sir hath been exerted ever since at a constant and considerable expense in supporting the Government interest throughout the county in opposition to a disaffected party and in procuring the return of two of my family to sit in the present Parliament, and this without soliciting your Majesty’s ministers for any employment and other consideration, it having been my sole ambition to serve your Majesty in a manner to deserve that honour I now aspire to.

He renewed his application in November 17558 but without success. He died 21 June 1767, having settled Ingestre and some 10,500 acres in Staffordshire in 1752 on his daughter Catherine, married to John Talbot.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. Cal. Treas. Bks. xxx. 27, 341; xxxii. 549.
• 2. Lady Cowper Diary, 31.
• 3. Bd. Trade Jnl. 1715-8, pp. 231, 238; Cal. Treas. Bks. xxxi. 365.
• 4. Rich. Edgcumbe to Walpole, undated [1727], Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss.
• 5. Coxe, Walpole, ii. 625, 671.
• 6. HMC Egmont Diary, i. 248.
• 7. Owen, Pelhams, 82, 201.
• 8. Add. 32854, f.152; to Newcastle, 19 Nov. 1755, Add. 32861, f. 33.