Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chetwood, Knightly
CHETWOOD, KNIGHTLY, D.D. (1650–1720), dean of Gloucester, was the eldest son of Valentine Chetwode or Chetwood, by Mary, daughter of Francis Shute, esq. of Upton, Leicestershire, and grandson of Richard Chetwode, esq. of Oakley in Staffordshire, by Anne, daughter and coheiress of Sir Valentine Knightly, knight, of Fawsley in Northamptonshire. Baker says he was a native of Coventry (Baker MSS. xi. 123), but it is certain that he was born at Chetwode in Buckinghamshire, and baptised there on 29 Oct. 1650 (Cole MSS. xxxii. f. 43; Lipscomb, Buckinghamshire, iii. 8). He received his education at Eton, and thence was elected in 1671 (extraordinarie electus) to a scholarship at King's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1675, M.A. in 1679. After taking orders he became chaplain to the Earl of Dartmouth, to the Princess of Denmark, and to James II. He was on terms of intimate friendship with the Earl of Roscommon and Dryden, who had a great regard for him; and was one of the early members of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1686 he was instituted to the rectory of Great Rissington in Gloucestershire, on the presentation of Reginald Bray; on 25 May 1687 he was appointed prebendary of Cumpton Dundon in the church of Wells; and on 10 Nov. 1688 he was installed archdeacon of York. When James II translated Trelawny to Exeter, he nominated Chetwood to the see of Bristol, but before the election passed the seals the king fled, to the great mortification of the bishop-nominate (manuscript note by Browne Willis, in his Survey of Bristol, 782), though another account states that Chetwood declined the offer of the bishopric (Political State of Great Britain, xix. 459). In 1689 he was appointed chaplain to all the English forces sent into Holland under the Earl of Marlborough. He was created D.D. at Cambridge in 1691, and in 1702 he was presented by Queen Anne to the rectory of Little Rissington in Gloucestershire. Luttrell, under date 25 April 1704, notes that ‘Mr. Francis Hare, of St. John's Colledge in Cambridge, is made chaplain-general of the army in the room of Mr. Chetwood.’ On 6 April 1707 Chetwood was installed dean of Gloucester in succession to Dr. William Jane.
He had an estate at Tempsford in Bedfordshire, where he died, according to the epitaph in the parish church, on 3 April 1720.
He married a daughter of Samuel Shute, sheriff of London, and left a son and a daughter, both of whom died unmarried. The son, Dr. John Chetwood, fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge (who died 17 Feb. 1752), by his will dated 25 Sept. 1733, gave to Wadham Knatchbull, fellow of the same college, and afterwards prebendary of Durham, a legacy of 200l., a locket of Lord Roscommon's hair, and all his books, together with his late father's manuscript sermons, with a request that Knatchbull, by his will, would order them to be destroyed. Dr. Knightly Chetwood had a claim, which was fruitlessly prosecuted by his son, to the ancient English barony of Wahull.
His works are: 1. ‘A Life of Wentworth Dillon, earl of Roscommon.’ In Baker MS. xxxvi. 27–44. This has never been printed, but all the previously unpublished facts contained in it will be found in a paper communicated by Thompson Cooper to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for December 1855. 2. ‘Life of Lycurgus,’ in the translation of ‘Plutarch's Lives,’ 1683. 3. ‘A Character, by a Person of Honour here in England,’ prefixed to Saint Evremont's ‘Miscellaneous Essays, translated out of French and continued by Mr. Dryden,’ 1692. 4. Life of Virgil and the Preface to the Pastorals in Dryden's translation of Virgil's Works, 1697. 5. Translation of the Second Philippic in ‘Several Orations of Demosthenes, English'd from the Greek by several Hands,’ 1702. 6. Three single sermons; also a ‘Speech in the Lower House of Convocation on Friday, 20 May 1715. Against the late Riots,’ Lond. 1715, 4to. 7. English poems, some of which are printed in Dryden's ‘Miscellany’ and in Nichols's ‘Select Collection of Poems;’ also English and Latin verses on the death of the Duchess of Newcastle (1676), in the Cambridge University collection on the marriage of the Prince of Orange (1677), and before Lord Roscommon's ‘Essay on Translated Verse,’ 1685.
He also edited the ‘Traitté touchant l'Obeissance Passive,’ Lond. (1685), translated by the Earl of Roscommon from the English of Dr. Sherlock. [Add. MSS. 5817 f. 30, 5833 ff. 42–7, 5836 p. 40, 5866 f. 67, 22130 f. 6, 23904 f. 111 b, 28892 f. 179, 28893 ff. 395, 398; Atkyns's Gloucestershire (1712), 183, 622, 624; Burke's Landed Gentry (1871), i. 230; Cat. of MSS. in Univ. Lib. Cambridge, v. 391, 428, 429; Cooke's Preacher's Assistant, ii. 76; Fosbrooke's Gloucester, 108; Gent. Mag. xxii. 92, xlix. 512; Harl. MSS. 2263, art. 1, 7038 f. 123; Harwood's Alumni Eton. 260; Hist. MSS. Commission 3rd Rep. 122, 8th Rep. pt. iii. p. 10 b; Historical Register (1720), Chron. 16; Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, vi. 489; Jacob's Lives of the English Poets (1720), 31, with Haslewood's MS. notes; Johnson's Lives of the Poets (1854), i. 9, 250; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), i. 198, 444, iii. 135; Luttrell's Brief Relation of State Affairs, v. 417, vi. 151; Nichols's Lit. Anecd. viii. 164; Nichols's Select Collection of Poems, i. 29, 70, iii. 169, 177, 179, iv. 348, vi. 53, 54; Nicolas's Historic Peerage (Courthope), 493; Plutarch's Morals (1870), ii. 368–76; Scott's Prose Works, 67; Willis's Antiq. of Buckingham Hundred, 173, 180.]