University Archives
Sir Charles and Lady Mary Barbara Chichester
Charles Chichester (1795-1847) was the second son of Charles Joseph Chichester (1770-1837) of Calverleigh Court, Devon, and his wife Mary Honoria. He attended the Catholic seminary, Stonyhurst, and was appointed ensign in 1811. He served in the Mediterranean, India and America. He became a captain in 1823 and a major in 1826. In 1826 he married his cousin, Mary Barbara Constable (1801-1876), the eldest daughter of Sir Thomas Hugh Clifford Constable of Tixall Hall, Staffordshire, and Burton Constable, Yorkshire. Charles and Mary Chichester were devout Catholics who shared a love of travelling. They lived at Calverleigh, but in 1835 Charles became Brigadier-General in the Spanish British Legion and left to fight in the Carlist war. Mary resided in Pau in the north of the Pyrenees. In 1837 he led the attack and capture of Irun. He was then posted back to North America from 1838 to the end of 1839 and in 1840 was posted to the West Indies, becoming acting Governor in 1842. In 1843 they returned to Canada where Charles Chichester died. Mary Chichester returned to England, but continued to travel extensively in Europe after her husband's death. Charles and Mary Chichester had eleven children, but only three sons and two daughters survived to adulthood. Their eldest son, Charles Raleigh Chichester (d.1891), was educated at Stonyhurst in 1845 and then travelled to the West Indies as an ensign in the 48th regiment. He served in the Crimean War. He married Mary Josephine Balfe (d.1871) in 1852, co-heir to the estates of James Balfe in County Roscommen. Their eldest son, Walter George Raleigh Chichester, succeeded not only to the Irish estates but also that of Burton Constable, Yorkshire, in 1894 upon the death of Sir Frederick Augustus Talbot Clifford Constable. In 1895 he took the name Constable. The 430 documents spanning 1794-1918 include a few title papers, accounts, military commissions and awards as well as miscellaneous items such as the 1857 authentication of a Catholic relic. The bulk of the correspondence is that of Charles and Mary Chichester and their children and dates from 1826 to 1891. There are 52 diaries and four fragments, recording the military careers of Charles Chichester and his son, the former during the Carlist war in Spain in the 1830s and in the West Indies and Canada in the 1840s and the latter during the Crimean war in the 1850s. Mary Chichester's diaries chronicle her extensive travels in Europe, Canada, America, the West Indies, South America and Ireland between the 1820s and 1876. [DDCH]
The main Chichester-Constable family archive is held at the East Riding of Yorkshire Archives Service [DDCC].