STAFFORDSHIRE – CHETWYND FAMILY AND INGESTRE

Calligraphic richly illustrated volume on vellum tracing the deeds and architectural accomplishments of the Chetwynd family of Ingestre Hall, 1690

Footnotes

A CONTEMPORARY RECORD OF THE ONLY WREN CHURCH OUTSIDE LONDON, the present volume having been compiled at the behest of Sir Walter Chetwynd FRS, who is thought to have commissioned the church from his friend Sir Christopher Wren; the volume itself compiled for Chetwynd by his protégé Gregory King, later renowned as map-engraver to John Ogilby and pioneer economist. (It will be noted that Chetwynd's own monument, on the south side of Ingestre chancel, has been left blank under the heading "Memoriae sacrum Walteri Chetwynd": he was to die two years later, on 21 March 1692.)

In the words of Sir Nikolaus Pevsner: 'For churches the locus classicus [in Staffordshire] is of course Ingestre, which can with full confidence be ascribed to Wren. It is dated 1676, and in it one breathes an air of harmony and calm not attained by any church in the county for well over a century after' ( The Buildings of England, Staffordshire, 1974, p.28). While the church and its monuments have happily survived, the hall itself was severely damaged by fire in 1882 and largely rebuilt.

Although this book was compiled under the aegis of Chetwynd, the actual work was begun, and probably carried through, by Gregory King (1648-1712), who was later to become well-known as a herald, antiquary and map-engraver to John Ogilby. He is now chiefly remembered, however, for his work as the 'first great economic statistician' (Some British Empiricists in the Social Sciences 1650-1900, 1997, p.xxii ): 'King's political arithmetic was highly original and he had no peer until the flowering of the nineteenth-century statistical movement. In the first place he was distinguished by tying his calculations closely to detailed available evidence, often by imaginative use of tax records, though his earlier work as a herald and cartographer was also vital. If King's political arithmetic was more ambitious than that of any other contemporary it was also more securely based' (Julian Hoppit, 'Gregory King', ODNB).

The present volume appears to have been, to a large degree at any rate, assembled by King at the start of his career: 'A manuscript compendium of Chetwynd deeds entitled "Chetwyndorum stemma" and written on vellum is dated 1690. It also contains tricks of seals and drawings of Ingestre Hall, the new church and monuments there and in Grendon church. The first part, which concludes with the Chetwynd pedigree to 1671, is evidently the work for which Gregory King was brought to Ingestre in 1670. Its continuation, which includes further medieval deeds and documents relating to public offices held by Chetwynd from 1662 to 1689, is also probably by Gregory King. Finally in September 1692 the chaplain Charles King stated that Chetwynd had done all that he intended on the antiquities of Staffordshire' (M. W. Greenslade, 'Walter Chetwynd', ODNB). The quality of the work suggests also that Gregory King could well have been responsible for its execution; although his near namesake, Charles, the chaplain, did early antiquarian work for Chetwynd and was also, to boot, a fine botanical illustrator (see Greenslade, op.cit.). Quite how the volume was assembled is not clear. Not only are there several pages bearing duplicate pagination, and others bearing none at all, but one of the final unnumbered leaves bears the pencilled heading, in what appears to be a late seventeenth century hand, "Before page 93". While the binding is clearly contemporary, the marbled endpapers are more characteristic of the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This impressive volume has remained in the family to this day.