Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/273

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Chiswell
265
Chiswell


ing health. In 1276 he appears as one of the councillors advising Edward to refuse to listen an longer to Llewelyn’s excuses, as signing the episcopal admonition addressed to the Welsh prince, and as sending his military service to the campaign of 1277. In 1278 his acting as co-dedicator of the new cathedral then consecrated with such solemn pomp at Norwich was almost his last share in public life (Cotton, p. 157). In 1279 his summons of the bishops to Reading, as dean of the province, and again his summons of the clergy of his diocese to grant an aid to the king, at the end of the year, were merely formal acts (Register of Peckham, vii. lxvii, Rolls Ser.) The vigilant eye of the energetic Franciscan, now archbishop, soon detected his inability to fulfil his episcopal functions. In Novemher 1279 Peckham s ‘Supplemental Injunctions to the Nuns of Barking’ shows his disapproval of the milder recommendations of their diocesan (ib. lxx). Immediately after he held an archiepiscopal visitation at St. Paul’s, which convinced im of Chishull’s complete infirmity. On 2 Feb. 1280 Peckham assigned to the treasurer of St. Paul’s the custody of his seal, and on 6 Feb. gave him, in conjunction with the dean and Fulk Lovel, archdeacon of Colchester, power to act for the infirm bishop (ib. lxxvi, lxxix). Next day (7 Feb. 1280) Chishull died (Kalandar and List of Obits in Simpson's Documents illustrative of History of St. Paul’s, Camden Soc. Some of the chroniclers, whom modern biographers have invariably followed, wrongly date his death on 8 Feb.) He was buried in St. Pau1’s on the north side opposite the choir. During his episcopate the chapel at the east end of his cathedral was built. He also founded and endowed a chantry and presented much costly plate and rich ornaments to his cathedral.

[The chronicles in Annales Monastici, Rolls Ser. especially Wykes; Liber de Antiquis Legibus (Camden Soc.); Annales Londiuenses in Stubbs’s Chronicles of Edward I and Edward II (Rolls Ser.); Patent Rolls; Martin’s Registrum Epistolarum J. de Peckham (Rolls Ser.); Simpson’s Documents illustrative of the History of St. Paul’s (Camden Soc.); Rymer’s Fœdera, vol. i. (Record ed.); Shirley’s Royal Letters of the Reign of Henry III, vol. ii. (Rolls Ser.) Short lives are in Wharton, De Episcopis et Decanis Londinensibus, pp. 101-3 and 210, supplemented in vol. i. of Newcourt’s Repertorium, especially p. 69; Foss’s Judges of England, ii. 296-7; Godwin, De Præsulibus; Hardy’s Le Neve, ii. 287. Campbell’s few remarks in Lives of the Chancellors, 1. 167, are, as usual, of no value.]

T. F. T.

CHISWELL, RICHARD, the elder (1639–1711), ‘who well deserves the title of metropolitan bookseller of England, if not of all the world,’ says Dunton (Life and Errors, i. 204), was born in the parish of St. Botolph, Aldgate, 4 Jan. 1639. He carried on an extensive business at the sign of the ‘Rose and Crown’ in St. Paul’s Churchyard, where he published many important books, of which a 'st is given in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ (liv. pt. i. 1793), where, however, it is not mentioned that hiswell was one of the four who issued the fourth folio edition of Shakespeare’s works (1685). Official publishing came to him. In 1680 he brought out the votes of the House of Commons by the authority of Speaker Williams, and an ‘Account of the Proceedings of the Meeting of the Estates of Scotland,’ 1689. The latter was continued by Richard Baldwin until October 1690, and contained the proceedings of the convention, with news and advertisements. Chiswell dealt principally in theology. Dunton tells us how ‘that eminent booqryseller and truly honest man . . . has rinted so many excellent books, written Both by the present and late archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop Patrick, Bishop Burnet, Bishop Vlyake, and other eminent divines’ (op. cit. ii. 666). According to Evelyn’s letter to Archdeacon Nicolson (10 Nov. 1699), Chiswell while printing Burnet’s ‘History of the Reformation’ lost the originals of some very valuable letters written if Mary Stuart to Queen Elizabeth and Leicester, which Evelyn had lent to the historian. Chiswell continued to publish books to within a short time before his death, which took place on 3 May 1711, and was buried (with his father and mother, and other members of the family) in the church of St. Botolph, Aldgate. The premises and business passed into the hands of Charles Rivington (d. 1742), who changed the sign of the ‘Rose and Crown’ to the ‘Bible and Crown,’ and laid the foundation of the famous house of Rivington, the oldest English publishing firm.

Chiswell’s first wife was Sarah, daughter of John King; and his second Mary, daughter of Richard oyston, bookseller to Charles I and Charles II. The second wife bore to him five children, who died young, and three sons who reached maturity: John, who died in India, Richard [q. v.], and Royston, who survived their father.

[Gent. Mag. liv. pt. i. 178-9; Nichols’s Lit. Anecd. iii. 609-ll, iv. 67, 73, viii. 464; Curwen's History of Booksellers (1873), p. 296; Morant’s Essex, 1768, ii. 562; Evelyn’s Diary, iv. 26.]

H. R. T.

CHISWELL, RICHARD, the younger (1673–1751), traveller, was son of Richard Chiswell the elder [q. v.], by his second wife,