CHESTER, Henry (1598-1666), of Beckerings Park, Ridgmont, Lidlington Park, Lidlington, and Tilsworth, Beds.

The Chesters were a relatively new family among the gentry of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. They had been armigerous since 1467, when their coat was granted to William Chester of London, and it was there that the family fortune was made in trade in the sixteenth century. 22 Waters, Chester, i. 1. Henry Chester’s great-grandfather, Sir William Chester, had been lord mayor of London in 1560; but it was only with Sir William’s son, William Chester (d. 1608), Henry’s grandfather, that the family acquired substantial estates in the country. Through William Chester’s marriage to a wealthy heiress, Judith Cave, daughter of the Buckinghamshire gentleman, Anthony Cave of Chicheley, in August 1577 the whole of the Cave’s Chicheley estates passed to William Chester’s son and heir, Anthony (b. 1566). It was Anthony Chester, Henry’s father, who built up the family’s landed estate, augmenting the Buckinghamshire landholdings, centred on Chicheley, with purchases in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire. He served as high sheriff of Buckinghamshire during the shrieval year 1602-3, purchased a baronetcy in May 1620, and served once again as sheriff, this time for Bedfordshire, in 1628-9 – though he continued to live at Chicheley, having obtained a licence to reside outside the county of his shrievalty.23 CB.

Although Henry was the third of Sir Anthony’s four sons, he was from childhood his father’s favourite, and in 1628 he settled upon Henry, then aged 30, the family’s Bedfordshire estates, of which the manor of Tilsworth, in the extreme west of the county near the Buckinghamshire border, became Henry Chester’s principal seat. In the words of Henry Chester’s monumental inscription, erected in the 1660s, the gift was an ‘outstanding token of his father’s affection’ (ingens paterni animi indicium).24 Waters, Chester, i. 131. It was a measure of this paternal favouritism that Henry was preferred to his father’s second son, William, in the entail of Chicheley. In 1631, this settlement on Henry was further extended by Sir Anthony with a further grant of all the lands remaining at his disposal. Henry was appointed the sole executor and residuary legatee of his father’s will. This highly unusual settlement of these estates – at the expense of Sir Anthony’s eldest son, Anthony junior (who later succeeded as 2nd bt.) – inevitably gave rise to litigation by Henry’s siblings who thought themselves hard done by. Even before the legal wrangling was concluded in Henry Chester’s favour, he voluntarily settled on his elder brother William in tail male the estate of East Haddon, Northants., and on his younger brother John the manor of Snelson, Bucks., said to be worth £200 per annum. In exchange, both brothers gave up their claims to annuities of £50 a year bequeathed them under the terms of their father’s will.25 Waters, Chester, i. 128.

Chester’s principal Bedfordshire estate was Lidlington Park, in the west of the county, about four miles due north of the earl of Bedford’s seat, Woburn Abbey. In the other direction, six miles to the south of Woburn, he owned another major estate at Tilsworth, where he also owned the impropriate rectory.26Emmison, ‘Ship Money pprs.’, 68, 72-4. In 1640 Thomas Brucce, 1st earl of Elgin, granted him the keepership of Beckerings Park at Ridgmond, in the adjacent parish to Woburn, on an 80-year lease and the park then seems to have become his main residence.27Beds. RO, CH 567-8.

In 1636 Chester served as sheriff of Bedfordshire – an office his father had filled less than a decade before – and seems to have taken a prominent place in the life of the county magistracy. Chester was charged, as sheriff, with implementing the Ship Money writ of 12 August 1636, under which Bedfordshire was assessed at £3,000. By late 1637 he had succeeded in collecting almost all of this sum (£2,949 15s) and it is clear from his correspondence with the privy council that part of this had to be raised by distraining the goods of those who refused to pay the levy.28 Emmison, ‘Ship Money pprs.’, 48-54; Beds. RO, CH 16/4; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 435; 1637, pp. 86, 169, 510; 1637-8, p. 440.

With the outbreak of war in 1642, Chester seems to have tried to maintain neutral. If, as seems likely, he was disposed to support Parliament, the fact that Bedfordshire was for much of the war under the control of the royalist capital at Oxford dictated that his allegiances should be kept well hidden. During the war, the major parliamentarian garrison at Newport Pagnall lay eight miles to the north west of his estate at Lidlington and Chester seems to have maintained cordial relations with its governor, Sir Samuel Luke*.29 Luke Letter Bk. 416.

Chester’s brother Sir Anthony Chester was a prominent royalist, however. He commanded a troop of horse at Naseby, suffered the sack of his house at Chicheley by parliamentarian forces, and in 1646 fled to exile in Holland to escape arrest.30 CB. During his brother’s exile, Henry Chester was entrusted with the administration of his estates and the maintenance of his wife and children. More surprisingly for an MP during the protectorate Parliaments was that he was a feoffee for Lady Digby, the widow of the executed Catholic Gunpowder Plotter, Sir Everard Digby. On her death in 1653, he secured the safe transference of her estates to her grandsons, notwithstanding that their father, the Catholic royalist and virtuoso, Sir Kenelm Digby, had been excluded from pardon by Parliament.31CCC 3170-1. During the civil war, he continued to expand his landed estate, purchasing from his royalist brother Sir Anthony some 568 acres in Chicheley for the sum of £6,300 in 1646.

Chester’s election as MP for Bedford in 1654 took place only after Bulstrode Whitelocke* had first been elected for the seat and had then decided to sit instead for Buckinghamshire. It was therefore not until 4 November, by which time Parliament had already been sitting for two months, that Chester was chosen, and he made no discernible impact on its proceedings during the eleven weeks it still had to run. His surviving papers contain a copy of the draft bill for settling the government which was presumably acquired by him during his time at Westminster.32Beds. RO, CH 30A. One of his fellow MPs in this Parliament was Edmond Wingate*, a neighbour with whom he had extensive financial dealings.33Beds. RO, CH 567-8; CH 861; CH 851; CH 803.

Although Chester did not reside in Buckinghamshire, the extent of his estates there justified his appointment by Richard Cromwell* in 1658 as sheriff of the county, though with a licence (granted 10 Feb. 1659) to continue to reside at his house in Bedfordshire.34 Waters, Chester, i. 129. With the government in turmoil in November 1659, when his terms as sheriff expired, Chester continued in office and took a major role in the politics of Buckinghamshire in the months leading up to the Restoration. In January 1660, he chaired a meeting of the freeholders of Buckinghamshire which drew up an address to George Monck*, then marching south towards London, complaining against the tyranny of the Rump Parliament and demanding the summons of a free Parliament.35 W. Kennett, Register and Chronicle (1728), 43. How sincere Chester was in endorsing these sentiments is uncertain: his capacity to rub along with whichever regime was in power between the 1620s and the 1660s suggests that there was more than a hint of opportunism in his political calculations. In Buckinghamshire, more than perhaps any other county, prominent Cromwellians like Richard Ingoldsby* were abandoning the sinking ship.

Chester’s role in the presentation of the address to Monck was the one occasion in his career when he fell foul of the regime. Among the Rump’s last actions was to order Chester’s arrest, on 7 February 1660, and he was sent for under safe custody of the serjeant-at-arms.36 CJ vii. 836a. His imprisonment did not last long. On 21 February the Members secluded by the December 1648 purge were readmitted to their places in the House of Commons and the Members of the restored Long Parliament ordered Chester’s release.37 CJ vii. 847b. For Chester, this brief spell of incarceration further enhanced his status as a sufferer for the monarchical cause and he was duly rewarded after Charles II’s return. He was created a knight of the Bath prior to the coronation in 1661. He then served as a deputy lieutenant in Bedfordshire and was active in the government of the county.

While Chester prospered in public life, his family life was marked by private tragedy, for Robert, the only son from his first marriage, died in 1659, leaving him childless.38 Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 293. Without a child of his own to inherit his extensive estates, Chester settled substantial sums on his extended family, transferring much of his wealth back to the main line of the family, the Chesters of Chicheley. His two elder brothers had both predeceased him, and the principal beneficiary of Chester’s largesse was now his nephew, Sir Anthony Chester, 3rd bt. Henry Chester permitted his nephew to recover substantial parts of the Chicheley estates which had been alienated by his father during the civil war and he altered his will to provide marriage portions for Sir Anthony’s five daughters. The two eldest daughters were to receive portions of £2,000 each; the next two, £1,000 each; and the youngest daughter, £1,500. The remainder of his estate Sir Henry settled on his nephew, Sir Anthony Chester, in tail male.39PROB11/322/222; Beds. RO, CH 26. He died on 30 July 1666 and was buried in Tilsworth Church in the vault he had constructed there for his first wife and their only son. His nephew, Sir Anthony Chester†, represented Bedford borough in the Parliament of 1685.