The Battle Abbey Roll. Vol. I.
by
The Duchess of Cleveland.
Prepared by Michael A. Linton
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Chaiters : A family of the name of Chaytor, now represented by Sir William Chaytor, has existed for three hundred years in the county of Durham. They are said to have migrated thither from Cheshire; but nothing is really known of them till the middle of the sixteenth century, when Christopher Chaytor, the son of a merchant-adventurer of Newcastle, "who had been some time a retainer of the great Duke of Somerset, and had borne many honourable offices under the Crown and in the County Palatine," bought the old moated manor house of Butterby (the Beautrove of the Norman De Audreys), and married the heiress of Clervaux. One of his great-grandsons, Col. Henry Chaytor, was governor of Bolton Castle under the commission of Prince Rupert, and held it gallantly to the last extremity; another, William (created a baronet in 1671) was forced to sell the whole of the Chaytor estate, and died a prisoner in the Fleet, where he had spent seventeen years of his life. He had survived all his thirteen children; and with him, his title became extinct; but a second baronetcy was granted to the family in 1831.
I do not, however, believe this to be the name here intended: for it seems, to say the least, improbable that a family, dating as far back as the Conquest, should receive its first grant of arms five hundred years afterwards. I take Leland's version, Chartres, as the true reading, and think we ought to substitute an r for the i that has been inserted by some accidental error.
Of the antiquity of the house of Chartres there can be no manner of doubt. Raoul de Chartres is entered on the Dives Roll, and as Ralph Carnotensis, held estates in Leicester in 1086 (Domesday). "Ralph, son of Robert de Chartres (a man of some eminency at the time as I apprehend by the stile of the deed) in Henry II.'s time confirms some land at Stretton to the canons of Erdbury."—Dugdale's Warwickshire. Walter de Chartres, of Lincoln, occurs in the Rotuli Curiae Regis of 1199, and John de Chartres, of the same county, in the time of Edward I.—Rotuli Hundredorum. Alan de Chartres, of Huntingdon, was his contemporary (Ibid.). Whiteparish, in Wiltshire, is called, previously to 1297, "terrarum Andreae de Chartres." Ralph de Chartres, in 1316, was one of the Lords of Graffham and Ware, Huntingdonshire; Roger de Chartres was summoned for military service in 1322, and served in 1344 as one of the knights of the shire for Huntingdon (Palgrave's Parl. Writs). I find in Bridge's Northamptonshire that the above named Alan married Joan, daughter of Bruna, daughter and coheir of Ralph de St. Sampson, who brought him half the manor of Grafton,[1] which was purchased of them in 1279 by their son Roger. Roger had two children, Peter and Elizabeth;—the last of the name that are mentioned in the county.
In Scotland we find the family flourishing as early as the days of Malcolm Canmore. Robert de Chartres lived in his reign, and, some time before 1170, witnessed one of the grants of his successor, William the Lion, to Kelso. The names of his son Walter and grandson Thomas are preserved in a charter of his great-grandson, a second Sir Robert, to the same monastery. Sir Robert's son, Sir Thomas, was appointed Lord High Chancellor of Scotland by Alexander III. and sent to France to negotiate the marriage that was to be frustrated by the King's untimely death. The next heir, Andrew, took the oath of allegiance to Edward I. with his son William in 1296; but shortly afterwards changed sides; for in the same year his barony of Amisfield in Dumfriesshire, with some other lands of his, were granted to Guy de Beauchamp, having been forfeited by "nostre enemy e rebel en le Reaume de Escoce." By this time the house of Chartres had grown to fair proportions, for I find that in 1296 both Robert de Chartres and Osbern de Chartres, holding lands in other Scottish counties, swore fealty to the English crown. One branch of the family remained seated at Kinfauns in Perthshire, till at least the fifteenth century. The barony of Cuthilgurdy, Corsewoull, Lochtoun, &c, are mentioned among their possessions; and, after the battle of Halidon Hill, one of the five strong castles that held out for David Bruce was Lochmaben, under Patrick de Chartres. None of these are found on the Amisfield pedigree.
Andrew's grandson, Sir Thomas de Chartres of Amisfield, was again Lord Chancellor of Scotland, and twice sent on an embassy to England by David Bruce. He went thither a third time with his master on the calamitous expedition of 1346, and was slain at the battle of Durham. From him the barony of Amisfield was transmitted by regular succession of father to son for nine descents, till, in the latter years of the seventeenth century, it passed to the daughter of Thomas Charteris.[2] She married John Hogg, and her descendants discreetly adopted her name.
Thomas, and his younger brother John, were the two sons of a Sir John who had been incarcerated in Edinburgh Castle for joining the loyalists under Montrose: and John was the father of the last male representative of his house. This Col. Francis Charteris was a disgrace and reproach to the ancient name he bore. His character is summed up in the following Epitaph, written by one of his contemporaries:
"Here lies the body of Colonel Don Francisco, who, with an inflexible constancy, and inimitable uniformity of life, persisted, in spite of age and infirmity, in the practice of every human vice, except prodigality and hypocrisy; his indefatigable avarice exempting him from the first, and his matchless impudence from the latter. Nor was he more singular in that undeviating viciousness of life, than successful in accumulating wealth; having, without trust of public money, bribe, worth, service, trade, or profession, acquired, or rather, created, a ministerial estate. Among the singularities of his life and fortune be it likewise commemorated, that he was the only person in his time who would cheat without the mask of honesty: who could retain his primeval meanness after being possessed of ,£10,000 a year, and who having done, every day of his life, something worthy of a gibbet, was once condemned to one for what he had not done. Think not, indignant reader, his life useless to mankind: Providence favored, or rather connived, at his execrable designs, that he might remain, to this and future ages, a conspicuous proof and example of how small estimation exorbitant wealth is held in the sight of the Almighty, by his bestowing it on the most unworthy of all the descendants of Adam."
He made his fortune where other men lost theirs—on the race-course and at the gambling table; and though "often detected and severely chastised" for his nefarious transactions, succeeded in raking together very considerable sums of money, and purchasing various estates—some of them from the Duke of Wharton. To one property near Edinburgh he gave the name of Amisfield, from the old barony in Dumfriesshire. His life was notoriously and scandalously licentious: [3] and he was twice sentenced to death for outraging a woman; once in 1721, when he received a free pardon from George I.: and again eight years afterwards; only escaping on this second occasion through the earnest intercession of his son-in-law Lord Wemyss. He died in 1731, "a hoary veteran in iniquity" at the age of fifty-six, bequeathing his entire fortune to the second son of his only child, Janet Countess of Wemyss, on condition that he adopted the name and arms of Charteris. Francis Wemyss accordingly became Francis Charteris; and on the death of his elder brother, David Lord Elcho, who had been attainted for joining in the Jacobite rising of 1745, succeeded as fifth Earl of Wemyss. He is now represented by another Francis Charteris, the ninth bearer of the title.