Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/178

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Chauncy
170
Chauncy

‘a learned, laborious, and useful governor,’ until his death, which occurred on 19 Feb. 1672. He was buried at New Cambridge. Chauncy married at Ware on 17 March 1630 Catherine, daughter of Robert Eyre, barrister-at-law, of Salisbury, Wiltshire. By her, who died on 24 Jan. 1668, aged 66, he had six sons, all bred to the ministry and graduates of Harvard, and two daughters. He was an admirable preacher, and in addition to a single sermon printed in 1655, he published twenty-six sermons on ‘The Plain Doctrine of the Justification of a Sinner in the Sight of God,’ London, 1659, 4to. He also wrote ‘The Doctrine of the Sacrament, with the right use thereof, catechetically handled by way of question and answer,’ 1642, and ‘Anti-synodalia Scripta Americana, or a proposal of the judgment of the Dissenting Messengers of the Churches of New England assembled, 10 March 1662;’ both these works are extremely rare. He contributed a poem to the ‘Lacrymæ Cantabrigienses,’ 1619, on the death of Anne, queen of James I; to the ‘Gratulatio Academiæ Cantabrigiensis,’ 1623, on the return of Charles from Spain; to the ‘Epithalamium,’ 1624, on the marriage of Charles and Henrietta Maria; and to the 'Cantabrigiensium Dolor & Solamen,’ 1625, on the death of James I and accession of Charles. He also delivered a Latin oration on 27 Feb. 1622, on the departure of the ambassadors from the king of Spain and the archduchess of Austria, after their entertainment at Trinity College, which was published the following year in ‘True Copies of all the Latine Crations made and pronounced at Cambridge.’ A brief ‘Επίκρισις’ from his pen was printed at the beginning of Leigh’s ‘Critica Sacra.’ Among his earlier friends Chauncy numbered Archbishop Ussher.

[Clutterbuck’s Hertfordshire, ii. 401, iii. 307-8; Savage's Genealog. Dict. i. 366-9; Fowler’s Memorials of the Chaunceys, pp. 1-37; Mather's Ecclesiastical Hist. bk. iii. pp. 133-41; Wood’s Fasti (Bliss), i. 391; Newcourt's Repertorium, i. 904; Baker’s Northamptonshire, i. 643; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1629-31, 1634-5, 1635-6, 1637; Rushworth's Hist. Coll. (1659-1701), pt. ii. vol. i. pp. 34, 316; Gardiner’s Hist. of England. 1603-42, viii. 116; Prynne's Canterburies Doome, pp. 96, 362, 494; Neal's Hist. of the Puritans, ii. 201, 262, 315-16; Brook’s Puritans, iii. 451-5; Parr’s Life of Ussher, p. 340; Chalmers’s Biog. Dict. ix. 216-18: Welch’s Alumni Westmon. (1852), p. 79; Allen’s American Biog. Dict. pp. 213-15; Wi1son’s Dissenting Churches, i. 289.]

G. G.


CHAUNCY, Sir HENRY (1632–1719), topographer, born in London in 1632, was the son of Henry Chauncy of Yardley Bury, Hertfordshire, and Anne, daughter of Peter Parke of Tottenham, and great-nephew of Charles Chauncy the nonconformist [q. v.] He was educated at the high school, Bishops Stortford, under Mr. Thomas Leigh, and admitted to Caius College, Cambridge, in 1647. Two years afterwards he entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1656. In 1661 he was made justice of the peace for the county of Hertford, and in 1673 justice of the peace and chief burgess for the borough of Hertford. In 1675 he became a bencher of the Middle Temple. He was the last that held the title of steward of the borough court, Hertford, being elected in 1675, and in 1680, when Hertford obtained its charter, he became the first recorder. In 1681 he was made reader of the Middle Temple, and in the same year was knighted at Windsor Castle by Charles II. In 1685 he was chosen treasurer of the Middle Temple, and in 1688 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law. The same year he was appointed justice for the cotuities of Glamorgan, Brecknock, and Radnor. He was thrice married: first, in 1657, to Jane, daughter of Francis Flyer of Brent-Pelham, sheriff of Hertfordshire, by whom (d. 1672) he had seven children; secondly, to Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Gregory Wood of Risby, Suffolk, and relict of John Goulsmith of Stredset, Norfolk, who died in September 1677; and thirdly, to Elizabeth, daughter of Nathaniel Thruston of Hoxne, Suffolk, by whom he had two children.

His father died in 1681, and he succeeded to the rich family estates. He compiled the history of his ancestral county, which he published in a large folio volume of 620 closely printed pages, entitled ‘The Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, with the Original of Counties, Hundreds, &c. ... Illustrated with a large Map of the County, a Prospect of Hertford, and the Ichnography of St. Albans and Hitchin, &c.,’ Londion, 1700. This work shows indefatigable research, although pedantic in style. Only five hundred copies were printed, and it has now become highly valuable. The engravings are very curious. An analysis of the book is in Savage’s ‘Librarian’ and Upcott's ‘English Topography.’ Chauncy left many additions, which the Rev. Nathaniel Salmon incorporated in his ‘History of Hertfordshire,' London, 1728, fol. In 1827 Mr. Robert Clutterbuck published a new edition, entitled ‘History and Antiquities of the Count of Hertford,’ which includes additions by Blore. The Rev. Thomas Tipping of Ardeley had a copy full of manuscript notes, which another hand had carried further down to