M.A. In 1571 Chester was appointed on the special commission of oyer and terminer for the trial of John Felton, who was charged with high treason for publishing the bull of Pope Pius V deposing Queen Elizabeth.
At this time Chester's foreign trade extended to the coast of Africa, and, besides his connection with the Merchant Adventurers and other trading companies, he was governor of the Muscovy Company. In a letter to Queen Elizabeth, written September 1567 by Ivan Vasilovitz, emperor of Russia, in which he grants at the queen's request various privileges to the members of this company, Chester appears second in the list of merchants whose names are mentioned. He was also very successful in the eastern trade; Queen Elizabeth speaks of him, in a despatch of 27 Sept. 1571, as one of her greatest and best merchants trading with the shah of Persia. Chester now retired from business, and resigned his office of alderman, probably in consequence of his wife's death. The remainder of his life was spent in retirement at the university of Cambridge, in the pursuit of classical and theological learning, to which he had always been greatly attached. He became a fellow-commoner, and his name is attached to a petition in favour of amending the university statutes on 6 May 1572. The exact date of his death is not known, but it was probably in 1595, for on 13 May in that year the administration of his goods was granted by the prerogative court to his son John. He died at Cambridge, but was buried in London in his vault in St. Edmund's, Lombard Street. He lived in Lombard Street, over against the celebrated George Inn, and his house was subsequently sold to Sir George Barne by William Chester, his son and heir.
Chester was twice married, first to Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Lovett of Astwell in Northamptonshire. She married in extreme youth and proved an excellent wife; she became the mother of six sons and eight daughters, three of the latter dying in infancy. Lady Chester died in 1560, and was buried 23 July in the church of St. Edmund, Lombard Street. Machyn describes the funeral, which was of unusual magnificence. The funeral sermon was preached by the famous Thomas Becon [q. v.] A monument with an inscription to her memory in Latin elegiacs, erected by her husband, perished at the great fire of London (Stype, Stow, 1720, bk. ii. pp. 156–7). His second wife was Joan, daughter of John Turner, of London, and widow of William Beswicke, alderman and draper. The marriage, which was a childless one, took place on 10 Nov. 1567, at St. Laurence Pountney Church, and the second Lady Chester died in 1572, and was buried 23 Dec. in that church beside her first husband.
Besides his other benefactions to Christ's Hospital, Chester built at his own cost the partition wall between that hospital and St. Bartholomew's; he also vaulted with brick the town ditch, which had hitherto been very ‘noisome and contagious’ to the hospital. To the hospital of St. Bartholomew he gave ten tenements in Tower Street and Harp Lane, to ‘find’ six poor women, which now produce a large annual income. William, his son and heir, afterwards became constable of Wisbech Castle, and was the ancestor of the Chesters of Chicheley. Thomas, the second son, was appointed by Queen Elizabeth in 1580 bishop of Elphin in Ireland.
[The account of Sir William Chester given by Mr. R. E. Chester-Waters is very full and valuable. Cooper's Athenæ Cantab. i. 311; Lond. and Midd. Arch. Soc. Visitation of London, 1568, p. 4; Hist. MSS. Comm. Hatfield House, pt. i. p. 347; Machyn's Diary; Stow; State Papers Henry VIII, v. 719, vi. 271; Colonial, East Indies, 1513–16, p. 8; Herbert's Livery Companies; Foxe's Acts and Mon., ed. Stoughton, vi. 194; Nichols's Herald and Genealogist, vi. 265; Trollope's Christ's Hospital; Charity Comm. 32nd Rep. pt. vi. 13, 24, 35; Burgon's Life of Gresham.]
CHESTERFIELD, Earls and Countesses of. [See Stanhope.]
CHESTERFIELD, THOMAS (d. 1451 or 1452), canon of Lichfield, was the author of a chronicle of the bishops of Coventry and Lichfield, extending from the foundation of the see to 1347, and printed in Henry Wharton's ‘Anglia Sacra,’ i. 423–43 (1691). From the date at which the work terminates it was presumed by William Whitlocke, who continued it to 1559, that Chesterfield flourished about the middle of the fourteenth century; and this opinion was accepted by Wharton (l.c., præf. p. xxxvi), who thought to corroborate his view by an extract relative to him from Archbishop Stafford's register, forgetting that Stafford was primate from 1443 to 1452, so that the passage cited must belong not to 1347 but to 1447. It must have been in 1447, during a vacancy of the see of Lichfield, that Chesterfield was entrusted by Archbishop Stafford with the custody of the spiritualities of the bishopric. This is indeed known to be Chesterfield's date. He is styled indifferently by this name and that of Worshop or Wursop, from which it may perhaps be inferred that he belonged to a Worksop family settled at Chesterfield. According to Wharton (l.c.) and Tanner (Bibl. Brit. p. 176),
