Nat Gould

John Egerton 1763-1847

John Egerton was born on 28 April 1763, the elder son of John Egerton of Friday Street in the City of London and Hadley in Middlesex.

His father and grandfather Charles Egerton 1686-1747 were London merchants and freemen of the Haberdashers' Company. The Egerton family had previously lived at Adstock in Buckinghamshire as gentry and rectors of the parish in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, descending from a family at Wall Grange near Leek in Staffordshire (1).

John Egerton 1763-1847 was educated at Balliol College in Oxford, graduating Bachelor of Arts in 1784 and Master of Arts in 1787 (2).

After ordination, he was appointed in 1805 preacher and school-master of the grammar school at Bunbury, a post in the gift of the Haberdashers' Company. He rebuilt the Bunbury preacher's house at his own expense and endowed it with land. He resigned from the post in 1829, to be succeeded by his nephew John Egerton 1796-1876 (3) on 3 August 1829 (4).

John Egerton 1763-1847 died on 29 April 1847 at Chester, and is commemorated on a white marble monumental tablet in Bunbury church (5).

(1) Wall Grange near Leek in Staffordshire, an estate owned by Trentham Priory, had been leased by 1484 to Hugh Egerton, and to William Egerton in 1509-1510. Their descendants were granted a forty-year lease in 1558, which was evidently renewed in 1606. The Egerton family continued at Wall Grange until it was sequestrated by the Parliamentarians between 1649 and 1654 during the Civil War: British History Online: Victoria County History: A History of the County of Stafford Volume 7 Leek and the Moorlands (1996).
(2) Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for the Year 1918: The Monuments of Bunbury Church, Cheshire volume 70 New Series volume 34 J.P. Rylands and F.C. Beazley (1919) page 90; and Alumni Oxonienses Volume II 1715-1886 page 415. The latter reference records his father as being John Egerton of Chelmsford in Essex.
(3) Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for the Year 1918: The Monuments of Bunbury Church, Cheshire volume 70 New Series volume 34 J.P. Rylands and F.C. Beazley (1919) pages 89-90; A History of All Saints’ School, Bloxham, 1860-1910 with Supplement, 1910-1925 (1925) page 12.
(4) He was instituted to the living by the bishop on that date: Index Ecclesiasticus 1800-1840 J. Foster (1890) page 57. He resigned the post in 1949.
(5) The tablet is inscribed in capital letters and reads 'Sacred to the memory of John Egerton, A.M., clerk of Huxtable in the county of Kent born XXVIII April MDCCLXIII. He died at Chester XXIX April MDCCCXLVII. From MDCCCV to MDCCCXXIX he held the office of "preacher" in this parish when at his own expense he rebuilt the "preacher's" house and added to it land. He rests from his labours among those to whom for so many years "as an ambassador of Christ" he delivered "a message from God" How it was received the day will disclose in which they that "sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake some to everlasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Daniel 12.2.": Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire for the Year 1918: The Monuments of Bunbury Church, Cheshire volume 70 New Series volume 34 J.P. Rylands and F.C. Beazley (1919) pages 89-90.