Indian Antiquary Vol 46

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 272

258
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[NOVEMBER, 1917
"Signed sealed Published and declared and delivered by the said Richard Charnocke the Testator as and for his last will and Testament in the presence of John Alsope S orivener William Braxton and John Bargeman his Servants."
Probate was granted to Stephen Charnocke on the 2nd June 1665, power being reserved to issue the same to Job, the other executor, on his return to England.
The Charnocks were a Lancashire family. They are said to have assumed the local name of their dwelling places in Leyland Hundred in that county, and to have given them the distinguishing epithets of Charnock Richard, Heath Charnock and Charnock Gogard. These are all mentioned in the 13th century and the villages of Charnock Richard and Charnock Heath are still so called.
The legacy of Richard Charnock to Penwortham and Hutton indicates that he had cause to be specially interested in those parishes, one of which may have been his birthplace. Unfortunately, the early registers of Penworthàm, which might have cleared up this point, were destroyed by fire in 1857.
A branch of the Charnock family settled in London and another in Hullcott, Bedfordshire, both in the 16th century, and Richard Charnock, as & London citizen and the owner of property in Bedford, may possibly have been connected with both branches; but no actual proof is forthcoming.
As regards the relationship between Richard and Job Charnock there can be no reasonable doubt. No record has been found of any other Job Charnock at this period aud the fact that Richard Charnock's younger son was out of England when the will was drawn up goes far to establish his identity with the famous Anglo-Indian. There is, moreover, the additional proof of Job's bequest to the poor of the district in which Richard Charnock resided.
The identification of Richard Charnock's elder son Stephen presents rather more difficulty. There is a great temptation to connect him with Stephen Charnock, puritan divine and chaplain to Henry Cromwell (a son of the Protector), and there are several reasons in favour of this theory. The divine was born in the parish of St. Katharine Cree in 1628, where Job also appears to have been born some two or three years later. Subsequently, Richard Charnock probably removed to the parish of St. Mary Woolchurch where he died. At any rate, the divine's father was also a Richard Charnock. The absence in the will of any allusion to Stephen's profession may be accounted for in two ways. First, the chaplain had fallen into ill odcur after the Protector's death and he remained in obscurity in London for fifteen years with no regular charge. Secondly, Richard Charnock was probably a Royalist and High Churchman and consequently would have little sympathy with his son's puritanical views. The main obstacle to the identification of the divine with the brother of Job Charnock lies in the statement in Wood's Athena (ed. Bliss, III, 1234-6) that Stephen's father, Richard Charnock, was "an attorney or solicitor," However, I have searched in vain for any record of a Richard Charnock, solicitor at this period. I have also discovered but one will of a Stephen Charnocks and this was proved in 1680, the date given as that of the death of the divine, I am therefore inclined to think that the Athence must be in error and that Richard Charnock, yeoman, was the father of both Henry Cromwell's chaplain and the founder of Calcutta.
1 The church of St. Mary Woolchurch was not rebuilt after the great fire of 1606. Its sita was roughly that of the present Mansion House.
#Wille, P. O., 92 Bath. . See the article on Stephen Charnock in the Dictionary of National Biography.