CHETWODE, John (1599-1667), of Oakley, Mucklestone, Staffs.

The Chetwodes were descended from a junior branch of a Buckinghamshire gentry family. They had settled at Oakley, near the Staffordshire-Shropshire border, by the early fifteenth century, but appear to have made little impact on county affairs before the mid-seventeenth century. Chetwode was still a minor when his father died, and his wardship was purchased by his mother for 100 marks. One of the two sureties for payment of this sum was the father of the future Cheshire parliamentarian Henry Birkhened*.26WARD9/162, f. 225; WARD9/204, f. 180v. Chetwode received a gentleman’s education at Brasenose and the Inner Temple and, but for the civil war, would probably have remained a relatively obscure member of the Staffordshire gentry.27Grazebrook, ‘Obligatory knighthood’, 14. Although there is no evidence that he played an active part in the war, his addition in February 1643 to the parliamentary commission for the association of Staffordshire and Warwickshire indicates that he was at least deemed well-affected to Parliament.28LJ v. 628a. This can also be inferred from his appointment to the Staffordshire bench in April 1647 and thereafter to successive county assessment commissions.29C231/6, p. 90. He attended six quarter sessions meetings under the Rump (four under the protectorate) and was also active on the Staffordshire county committee during the early 1650s.30Staffs. RO, Q/SO 5, pp. 276, 444; Q/SO 6, ff. 6v, 72; D793/91.

Chetwode and Birkhened were among those selected to serve in the Nominated Parliament in 1653. What recommended Chetwode to the council of officers is a mystery. That he was a man of godly convictions is strongly suggested by several of his later appointments and by the interest he showed in Anna Trapnel, the self-styled prophetess of the Fifth Monarchy, who in September 1653 pronounced the doom of the Nominated Parliament and the Lord’s rejection of Oliver Cromwell*.31A. Trapnel, The Cry of a Stone (1654), 2 (E.730.3); Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 388. However, it is significant that Chetwode was one of 19 men who appear to have been nominated at a later stage than the majority of MPs, which may well indicate that he and the other eighteen were chosen because some of the original nominees had been considered politically unreliable, or, more likely, because they had refused to sit.32Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 139. In the event, he received only one appointment in this Parliament – to the 20 July committee for the poor and for regulating the commissions of the peace.33CJ vii. 287a.

Although an anonymous pamphleteer listed Chetwode among those members of the Nominated Assembly opposed to a state-supported national church, his appointment that year as an ejector for Staffordshire strongly suggests that he favoured a publicly maintained and parish-based ministry.34Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 195-6, 414; A. and O. This can also be inferred from his work with his fellow ejectors in surveying and restructuring the county’s parishes and from his apparent familiarity with the ‘orthodox’ Independent divine Joseph Caryl, to whom he sold land in 1654.35C54/3807/11; LPL, COMM XIIc/1, ff. 1213, 26, 60r-v; J. Sutton, ‘Cromwell’s commrs. for preserving the peace of the Commonwealth’, in Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution ed. I. Gentles, J. Morrill, B. Worden (Cambridge, 1998), 175. Similarly, Chetwode’s appointment in 1655 as a Staffordshire commissioner to assist Major-general Charles Worsley* identifies him as a proponent of godly reform.36TSP iv. 648. Despite his willingness to serve in local office under the Rump in 1649-53, his support for the commonwealth seems to have waned by September 1659, when it was reported that he ‘refused to act’ as a Staffordshire sequestrations commissioner.37CCC 748.

It is not clear whether Chetwode approved of moves towards the restoration of monarchy early in 1660; but the restored Long Parliament does not seem to have approved of him, for he was omitted from the March 1660 commission of peace. During the course of that year he would be omitted from all local offices. The Staffordshire royalists regarded him as a ‘fanatic’, but conceded that he was ‘an able man for parts, and sober’.38‘Gentry of Staffs.’ ed. Kidson, 12. Nothing more is known about Chetwode until his death in the spring of 1667. He was buried at Mucklestone on 25 April.39Mucklestone Par. Reg. ed. Urry, Thomas, 155. Before his death he made a nuncupative will in which he left two beds to his wife, £50 to his daughter, and his personal estate – which was valued at £346 – to his son and heir Philip.40Staffs. RO, B/C/11, will of John Chetwood, 1667. Chetwode was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.