Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chetwynd, William Richard Chetwynd
CHETWYND, WILLIAM RICHARD CHETWYND, third Viscount Chetwynd (1685?–1770), was the third son of John Chetwynd of Ridge in Staffordshire, M.P. for Stafford in 1689, 1700, and 1702, who was younger son of Sir Walter Chetwynd of Ingestre, head of the ancient family of Chetwynd, first of Chetwynd, Shropshire, and then of Ingestre, and younger brother of Walter Chetwynd, M.P. for Stafford and Lichfield 1708 to 1735, who was master of the buckhounds 1706 to 1711, and was created Viscount Chetwynd of Bearhaven, co. Cork, and Baron of Rathdowne, co. Dublin, in the peerage of Ireland, with remainder to his brothers John and William Richard, on 29 June 1717. Chetwynd was educated at Westminster, from which he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford, in 1708, and was appointed resident at Genoa in 1708, through the influence of his brother Walter, who was a member of the whig administration and had powerful parliamentary connections after his succession to the great estate of Ingestre. In 1712, after the accession of Harley and St. John to power, Chetwynd was recalled from Genoa, but in 1714 he was elected M.P. for Stafford, again through the influence of his brother, and in 1717 he became a junior lord of the admiralty in the whig administration. In 1722 he was elected M.P. for Plymouth, but in 1727 he lost both his seat in parliament and his official position. He re-entered parliament as M.P. for Stafford in 1734, and in the following year his brother John Chetwynd, who had been an M.P. for many years, receiver-general of the duchy of Lancaster, and envoy extraordinary to ALadrid in 1717, succeeded to the Irish viscounty under the patent of limitation, and to the family estates. On 29 Dec. 1744 Chetwynd was appointed to the lucrative post of master of the mint, which he retained until 8 June 1769, but he retained his seat for Stafford until his death on 3 April 1770. On 21 June 1767 he succeeded his brother John as third Viscount Chetwynd, but the Ingestre manor and estates went to his niece, who had married the Hon. John Talbot, second son of Lord-chancellor Talbot, and great-grandfather of the eighteenth Earl of Shrewsbury and Talbot, in whose family it still remains. The third Viscount Chetwynd married Honora, daughter of John Baker, English consul at Algiers, by whom he left two sons, the elder of whom succeeded as fourth viscount.
[Welch's Alumni Westmonasterienses. ed. 1852, p. 243; Lodge's Irish Peerage, vol. v.; Gent. Mag. 1770.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.63
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
| Page | Col. | Line | |
| 213 | ii | 28 f.e. | Chetwynd, William R. C., 3rd Viscount Chetwynd: after 1702 inser M.P for Tamworth 1698-1700 |
| 23 f.e. | omit and Lichfield and after to insert 1722 and 1724 to | ||
| 22 f.e. | for 1785 read 1784 |