Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chauncey, Ichabod
CHAUNCEY, ICHABOD (d. 1691), physician and divine, the date and place of whose birth are unknown, was chaplain to Sir Edward Harley's regiment at Dunkirk at the time the Uniformity Act was passed. Shortly afterwards he obtained a living in Bristol, and, being ejected for nonconformity, practised physic there for eighteen years, and obtained a considerable practice. In his 'Innocence vindicated' he states that in 1684 he was a M.A. of thirty years' standing, and for twenty had been a licentiate of the London College of Physicians. In 1682 he was prosecuted for not attending church, &c. (36 Eliz. c. i.) His defence was that he accommodated his worship as nearly as he could to that of the primitive church, but he was convicted and fined. In 1684 he was again prosecuted under the same act, and was imprisoned in the common gaol for eighteen weeks before he was tried, when he was sentenced to lose his estate both real and personal, and to leave the realm within three months. From a declaration drawn up by the grand jury, he appears to have been in the habit of defending such dissenters in Bristol as were prosecuted under the various acts relating to religion; but from the 'Records of the Broadmead Meeting, Bristol,' his persecution appears to have originated in the private malice of the town clerk. Chauncey resided in Holland till 1686, when he returned to Bristol, where he died in 1691. His only work is 'Innocence vindicated by a Narrative of the Proceedings of the Court of Sessions in Bristol against I. C., Physician, to his Conviction on the Statute of the 36th Elizabeth,' 1684.
[Lempriere's Biog. Dict.; Records of a Church of Christ Meeting in Broadmead (Hanserd-Knollys Society); Calamy's Nonconf. Mem. iii. 778 (1805).]