Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/280

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Cholmondeley
272
Chorley

with limitation of the honour for want of heirs male to his brother, George Cholmondeley [q. v.] On 29 March 1706 he was sworn a privy councillor to Queen Anne, and on 27 Dec. advanced to the dignity of Viscount Malpas and Earl of Cholmondeley, with the like entail on his brother George. On 22 April 1708 he was constituted comptroller of her majesty’s household, and on 10 May following was sworn a member of the new privy council after the union of the kingdoms. On 6 Oct. of the same year he was appointed treasurer of her majesty's household. He was also constituted lord-lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Cheshire, and lord-lieutenant of North Wales. He was removed from these and other offices in 1713, but was restored to them on the accession of George I, by whom he was constituted treasurer of the household.

[Collins’s Peerage (ed. 1812), pp. 30–1; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland (Archdall), v. 66–7; Ormerod's Cheshire; Earwaker’s East Cheshire.]

T. F. H.


CHOLMONDELEY, MARY, Lady (1563–1626), litigant, was baptised at Nether-Poever, Cheshire, 20 Jan. 1562–3. She was the daughter of Christopher Holford of Holford, Cheshire, by his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Randle Manwaring of Over-Poever, and widow of Peter Shakerley of Houlme-juxta-Nether-Poever. Mary had a half-brother by her father’s previous marriage (who married Miss Shakerley on the day of his father’s marriage to Mrs. Shakerley), but he died without issue shortly after his marriage. Mary married Sir Hugh Cholmondeley (1513–1590) [q. v.], of Cholmondeley, Cheshire, and her father’s death followed immediately in 1581. Thereupon she entered upon the lawsuits to succeed to his property by which her name is remembered. Her opponent was her uncle, George Holford of Newborough, her father’s half-brother, who claimed all the family estates as next male in descent. Mary persisted in her right, and the bitter contest went on for forty years. Ultimately friends prevailed upon the litigants, about 1620, to take equal shares. Mary received Holford manorhouse, where she resided in her old age. She made important enlargements to this house, and she died there 15 Aug. 1626, when sixty-three years old. She had five sons [see Cholmondeley, Robert] and three daughters; one of the latter married a Grosvenor of Eaton. James I called Mary ‘the bold lady of Cheshire.’

[Ormerod’s Cheshire, i. 495–6; Burke's Extinct Peerage, 118; E. G. Salisbury’s Border Worthies, 2nd ser. p. 55.]

J. H.


CHOLMONDELEY, ROBERT, Earl of Leinster (1584?–1659), was the eldest son of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley of Cholmondeley [q. v.] and Mary [see Cholmondeley, Mary, Lady], sole daughter and heiress of Christopher Holford. On 29 June 1611 he was advanced to the dignity of baronet, and in 1628 was created Viscount Cholmondeley of Kells, in the province of Leinster. For his special services in raising several companies of foot in Cheshire in 1642, in collecting other forces for defending the city of Chester at its first siege, and for his conduct in the fight at Tilston Heath, he was, at Oxford 1 Sept. 1645, created a baron of England by the title Lord Cholmondeley of Wiche-Malbank (Nantwich), and in the ensuing March Earl of Leinster. After the triumph of the parliamentary part he was suffered to compound for his estate by a fine of 7,742l. He died 2 Oct. 1659, aged 75, and was buried in the chancel of Malpas church. He was married to Catharine, younger daughter and coheiress of John, lord Stanhope of Harrington, vice-chancellor of the household to James I, but had no legitimate issue. Robert, son of his brother Hugh, became heir to his estate, but the lands of Holford, which he inherited from his mother, were settled on Thomas Cholmondeley, his natural son by Mrs. Coulson, to whom, as was thought, he was affianced but never married.

[Collins’s Peerage of England (ed. 1812), iv, 29–30; Lodge’s Peerage of Ireland (Archdall), v. 64–5; L1oyd's Memoirs; Ormerod's Cheshire; Earwaker's East Cheshire.]

T. F. H.


CHORLEY, CHARLES (1810?–1874), journalist and man of letters, born at Taunton about 1810, was the son of Lieutenant and Paymaster John Chorley of the 1st Somerset militia (d. Feb. 1839). The greater part of his life was spent at Truro, where he acted for thirty years as sub-editor and reporter of the ‘Cornwall Gazette,’ the old-established tory paper of the county. He held also the posts of secretary to the Truro Public Rooms Company, and sub-manager of the Truro Savings Bank. For eleven years (1863–74) he edited the ‘Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall,’ and did much to promote the energetic management of that society. He died at Lemon Street, Truro, on 22 June 1874, aged 64. Chorley was a man of wide scholarship, well versed in the classics and several modern languages, and of good classical taste. It was his custom to print for the private gratification of his friends, to whom alone the initials ‘C. C.’ revealed the authorship, small volumes of translations from the dead and living languages. The