Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/215

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Chetham
207
Chettle

the king, and in October 1648 was elected by the deputy-lieutenants and parliamentary commissioners as high treasurer ror the county. On 27 Nov. 164d he was a second time appointed high sheriff, but was excused from Acting on account of his age and infirmity. A large body of curious correspondence exists to prove that his public appointments involved him in great vexation and expense.

For several years before his death he had 'taken up and maintained' twenty-two poor boys of Manchester, Salford, and Droylsden; and some large scheme of charity was long uppermost in his thoughts, as is seen by numerous drafts of wills which remain among his papers. He opened negotiations in 1648 for the purchase of the 'College' at Manchester for the purpose of a school, but they fell through for the time, and it was left for his executors to carry his intentions into effect. He died at Clayton Hall on 20 Sept. 1653, when he was seventy-two years old, and his remains were buried at midnight on 11 Oct. at the Manchester Collegiate Church. He died unmarried, and by his will, made in 1651, he bequeathed 7,000l. for the foundation and endowment of a hospital for the education and maintenance of forty poor boys belonging to certain parishes of his native county, and for apprenticing them when of a fittmg age. This number has now been considerably increased. He also left 1,000l. and the residue of his property for the purchase of books for a public library in Manchester, and 100l. to be expended in providing a fit place for the library. He likewise directed that 200l. should be bestowed in buying 'godly English books . . . proper for the edification of the common people, to be chained ... in the parish churches of Manchester and Bolton, and the chapels of Turton, Walmesley, and Gorton.' The founder named twenty-four persons who were to be his feoffees or trustees of his charity, and they purchased in 1654 the fine building which was formerly the Baron's Hall, but was rebuilt before 1426 by Thomas de la Warre, warden of Manchester, as a residence for the members of the collegiate body, and passed to the Earl of Derby at the dissolution of the college in 1547. It was formally dedicated to its present purposes at a meeting held on 6 Aug. 1656. The valuable library now contains over forty thousand volumes. Chetham's greatest monument is, of course, his hospital and library, but his memory is kept green in other ways in Manchester. A well-known antiquarian society bears his name; a statue of him by W. Theed was placed in the cathedral in 1858; another statue is seen in a niche at the front of the town hall; and there is a fine fresco entitled 'Chetham's Life Dream' in the public room of the same building, painted by Mr. Ford Madox-Brown.

[Raines's MS. Memoir of Chetham unfinished), No. 27979 in Chetham Library; Whatton's Hist. of Chetham Hosp. and Library, 1833; Fuller's Worthies. 1840, ii. 214; Edwards's Manch. Worthies and their Foundations, 1865; same information in his Memoirs of Libraries; Taylor's Old Halls in Lancashire and Cheshire, 1886; Chetham's Church Libraries, by French (Chetham Soc.), 1855; Christie's Old Church and School Libraries of Lancashire (Chetham Soc.), 1885; Cheshire and Lancashire Funeral Certificates (Record Soc.), 1882, p. 200; Palatine Note-book, i. 116. 127, 218, ii. 232, iv. 105; Bailey in Local Gleanings. 1878, p. 232 (as to the dedication of the hospital); Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1635, pp. 549. 568, 595, 1635-6. p. 290, 1637, p. 280; Raines's Lane. MSS. xix. 348; the Chetham papers are preserved at the Chetham Library.]

C. W. S.

CHETHAM, JAMES (1640–1692), writer on angling, eldest son of Edward Chetham of Smedley, near Manchester, a kinsman of Humphrey Chetham the founder [q. v.], was born on 29 Dec. 1640. In 1681 he published anonymously 'The Angler's Vade Mecum, or a compendious yet full Discourse of Angling, by a Lover of Angling,' London, 12mo, an excellent work, which gives him the rank of an original writer on the sport. A second edition, enlarged, was published in 1689, with a preface dated from Smedley, near Manchester, and a third edition appeared in 1700. He died unmarried in 1692, and was buried in the Manchester Collegiate Church on 4 Dec. in that year. His will, dated 27 Nov. 1691, by which he left his property to his brother George, and disinherited his brother James, gave rise to long litigation.

[Chetham papers in Chetham Library, Manchester; Westwood and Satchell's Bibliotheca Piscatoria, 1883, pp. xvii, 59-60; Whatton's Hist, of Chetham's Hospital, 1833, p. 138, where he wrongly ascribes the Angler's Vade Mecum to a nephew of the author.]

C. W. S.

CHETTLE, HENRY (d. 1607?), dramatist and pamphleteer, son of Robert Chettle, a dyer of London, bound himself apprentice for eight years at Michaelmas 1577 to Thomas East, a stationer (Arber, Transcript of Stat. Reg. ii. 81), and in 1591 became partner with William Hoskins and John Danter (Ambs, Typogr. Antiq., (Herbert), ii. 1113). Chettle first comes into notice as editor of Greene's 'Groats-worth of Wit.' Greene died on 2 Sept. 1592, and Chettle lost no time in editing the posthumous tract. Doubts as to the genuineness of passages of the 'Groats-worth of Wit'