£4,250
Five Centuries: Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art | 689
Auction: Five Centuries: Furniture, Paintings & Works of Art
with bullion shoulder epaulettes, black facings with hook and eye front fasteners with silver buttons pressed with GR in the centre and Queens County Regiment, the two tails with concealed pockets and terminating in a decorative silver wire knot, with an internal label inscribed 'Woodbrook'; together with a waistcoat and breeches in cream flannel, with buttons engraved with the initials QC [Queens County] surmounted by the Crowned Harp of Ireland; the breeches with a further label inscribed 'Woodbrook', associated with the coatee
Provenance: Likely to have belonged to Major Jonathan Cope Chetwode (b. 31 May 1757, d. 11 May 1839) traced from an internal label inscribed Woodbrook (the family seat in Ireland)
The Estate of the late J. E. Adam
Note: The militia regiment of Queen's County (now Co. Laois), the Royal Queen's County Militia, was originally raised in 1793 as the 25th Militia Battalion, one of only six Irish militia regiments allowed to bear the title ''Royal''. Re-designated the 104th Battalion following the militia reforms of 1833, it became the 4th Battalion Leinster Regiment (Queen's County Militia) following the army reforms of 1881. When initially raised, the Queen's County Militia was apparently a fine unit. A commentator of the time (December 1793), who had been expecting to see an ''undisciplined rabble'', in fact found the Queen's County Militia to be by ''no means inferior (in appearance) to that of any veteran regulars I ever met with, in point of personal consequence and acquired uniformity''. They took to the life of soldiering, and in 1796 they and the Dublin City Militia became the first two militia regiments to volunteer to serve outside Ireland.
Major Jonathan Cope Chetwode (b. 31 May 1757, d. 11 May 1839), was the son of Valentine Knightley Chetwode and Henrietta Maria Cope. His estate was Woodbrook, near Portarlington, and Burke's Landed Gentry of Ireland (1958) and Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) acknowledge him as a Major in the Militia. Edith Mary Johnston-Liik (History of the Irish Parliament, (6 vols., Belfast, 2002) iii, 409) has him in his youth as a (?) Cornet in the Arlington Light Cavalry. Strickland (viz., Walter G. Strickland, ‘The Chetwoods of Woodbrook in the Queen's County. With a portrait and book plate of Knightley Chetwood, d. 1752 and a portrait of Hester Brooking his wife’, in Journal of the County Kildare Archaeological Society, Vol. IX, pp. 205-26, 273-6, 381-6, 410-15, 1918-22; Vol. X, pp. 32-6, 100-6, 150-3, 195-6, 1922-8) mentions service as Ensign in the 102nd and 14th Regiments. In 1781 he was High Sheriff of Queen's County, and from 1790 to 1797 M.P. for Downpatrick. He was twice married, but had no issue.