Family and Education

b. aft. 1667, 1st s. of Francis Chamberlayne, Grocer, of St. Lawrence Pountney, London, common councilman of London 1673–82, 1689–d., by Mary, da. and coh. of Richard Smith, Dyer, of All Hallows the Less, London and Islington, Mdx., common councilman of London 1654, 1658–62, 1666; nephew of Samuel Shepheard I*. unm.  suc. fa. 1695.1

Offices Held

Biography

Chamberlayne’s family had come originally from Warwickshire, and in 1671 his uncle, a London merchant, purchased the manor of Stoneythorpe in that county, which he subsequently left to Chamberlayne’s father, a cooper and merchant in the City. Chamberlayne engaged in commerce himself and may have been involved in the slave trade. Either he or his father was added to the London lieutenancy in March 1689, the same year his father recovered his place on the common council. In 1710 Chamberlayne owned at least £4,000 worth of stock in the Bank of England, and three years later he was returned for the venal borough of New Shoreham. He voted against the expulsion of Richard Steele on 18 Mar. 1714, and was classified as a Whig in the Worsley list, but after returning to Parliament in 1720 was apparently thought of as a Tory. He died, intestate, on 26 Sept. 1728.2

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: Paula Watson

Notes

• 1. J. R. Woodhead, Rulers of London (London and Mdx. Arch. Soc.), 44, 153; PCC 91 Irby.
• 2. VCH Warws. vi. 128; HMC Lords, iii. 47; Egerton 3359 (unfol.); Parlty Hist. xv. 349; PCC admon. Sept. 1728.