CHETTELL, Francis (1613-56), of Blandford St Mary, Dorset.

Francis Chettell’s family had risen into the ranks of the minor gentry in the mid-sixteenth century, purchasing their estate, at Blandford St Mary, at the dissolution of the monasteries.15sig. Tanner 59, f. 392; Dorset RO, D/ALM/13; Brunton and Pennington, Long Parliament, 164, 170; Hutchins, Dorset, i. 163. Francis Chettell was educated at the Middle Temple and may have been intended for a legal career, but with the outbreak of the first civil war he instead became involved in the parliamentarian war effort in Dorset.16M. Temple Admiss. i. 124. In August 1643 he was named to the local committee to raise money for the army, and he was a founder member of the county standing committee appointed in July 1644.17Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, pp. xi-xii. Chettell was one of the most active members of this committee at the end of 1644, signing orders in October and November, and sending a letter to the House of Lords requesting further military aid for the county on 9 November.18Add. 29319, ff. 21-2, 23; LJ vii. 67b. Chettell continued to sit on the committee during 1645, and his local importance no doubt facilitated his return, as recruiter MP for Corfe Castle, on 17 April 1646.19Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 22; C219/43/164.

He took the Covenant in June 1646, but thereafter involved himself mostly with Dorset affairs, and was excused from attendance in the Commons on six occasions between the end of June 1646 and December 1647.20CJ iv. 586a, 592a; CJ v. 47b, 95b, 245b, 330a, 390a. He was a constant presence at the county committee throughout 1646-8; he was appointed to assessment commissions in June 1647 and February 1648; and in December 1647 the Commons specified that he would be one of five MPs to attend the collection of the Dorset assessment in person.21Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 392; 60, ff. 510-1; Add. 29319, ff. 21-2, 36-7; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, passim; A. and O.; CJ v. 400b. Although not listed in the libri pacis, Chettell also seems to have acted as a justice of the peace in Dorset during this period. In March 1648 he was listed as a magistrate appointed to examine evidence before the Dorchester assizes, and he acted in the case of Edith Brewer later in the same year.22Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 274; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 374. In both cases he worked in conjunction with his neighbour, John Hanham of Wimborne Minster. Another of his associates was Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, who recorded Chettell’s presence on the bench in April and August 1646, and January 1648.23Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx I, pp. xxxiv, xxxviii, xlvii; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 333. Chettell was named to the local militia commission on 2 December 1648. His name appears on a list of those secluded from Parliament four days later, but it is possible that by then he had returned to Dorset.24A. and O.; A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62);Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 152-3 and n., 370.

Whether or not he had been secluded from Parliament, Chettell maintained a degree of local influence during the commonwealth. On his return to Dorset from London before the purge, Chettell travelled with Ashley Cooper in his coach.25Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx I, p. l. He attended the quarter sessions in January 1649, and was appointed to the gaol delivery commission at Poole, for the first time, in 1655.26Christie, Shaftesbury i. appx I, p. li; C181/6, p. 95. In 1651 Chettell married Dorothy Tregonwell, eldest daughter of the royalist Thomas Tregonwell, and brother of John Tregonwell* of Anderson, near Blandford St Mary; the couple had two children, born in 1653 and 1656.27Dorset RO, PE/BLM:RE1; Cornw. RO, F/4/177/3. It seems that the Tregonwells did not honour the terms of the marriage settlement, as a legal dispute with Chettell and his wife arose immediately after the wedding.28C2/Chas.1/C121/82; C6/13/44. This may have contributed to the sharp decline in the family’s fortunes during the early 1650s. Chettell’s will, drafted in November 1656, paints a sorry picture. For overseers he relied not on his parliamentarian comrades but on his old friend, John Hanham, and the minister of Blandford St Mary, John Pitt, while his wife was instructed to raise capital to pay his debts and provide for his children by felling trees on his two dilapidated farms, themselves ‘in decay and fit for sale’. Chettell died soon after writing his will, which was proved barely a month after it was drafted.29Hutchins, Dorset i. 161; A.C. Almack, ‘The Pitt Family of Blandford St Mary’, Dorset Nat. Hist. and Arch. Magazine xxxi (1945), 165-75; PROB11/260/592. He was succeeded by his infant son, Thomas, who seems to have had little success in resurrecting the family fortunes. In the visitation of 1677 he was summoned to give evidence, but did not attend, and within 20 years the remainder of the family estate had been sold to pay their debts and the house at Blandford St Mary demolished.30Vis. Dorset 1677 (Harl. Soc. cxvii), 88; Brunton and Pennington, Long Parliament, 170; Hutchins, Dorset i. 163.