Details of Sculptor

Surname

Chapman

Alternative Surname

First Name

Edward

Initial of Surname

C

Year of Birth/Baptism

Flourished

Year of Death

1729

Biographical Details

The son of Edward Chapman, stonemason and contractor, he married Margaret Wilcocks (or Wilcox). They both appear to have been of Warwickshire stock, though the family had settled in London. The Masons’ Company ‘search’ records for 1696 state that he was then working with his father. Chapman’s yard was in Red Lion Square and in 1706 he was employing William Palmer as an assistant.
He made chimneypieces for Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland, the home of Lord Nottingham, between 1699 and 1705 (4). He also provided other mason’s work, including a marble basin to the design of a ‘Mr Lumley’, perhaps John Lumley of Northampton. In his correspondence with Lord Nottingham, Chapman protested ‘I was sober all times’, presumably in response to an accusation of intemperance (Finch 1901, 1, 75). This was not Chapman’s only dispute with a patron. On 11 May 1699 Lord Ashburnham wrote to his banker, Henry Hoare, asking him to ‘chuse five marble chimney-pieces of different colour’d marble and the newest fashion of the dimensions mentioned in the drawings.’ A second letter followed in August 1699, when Ashburnham requested of Hoare ‘I trust you will be so kind to take the trouble of going ... to one Chapman of whom I have bought fine marble chymney pieces with slabbs, coves, Hearth Stones etc. all ready to come down & be sett up here in the new built lodgings. Chapman is to have 42-02= on his delivery of the goods which I desire you to pay to him accordingly ... I desire you see they be well packed as they ought to be & that the word Marble be written in great letters upon every box or parcel’ (Ashburnham Letterbook ASH 842, p 269). Hoare followed his instructions and Lord Ashburnham wrote again ‘In my passage by London to Sussex, I hope to have time to view the marble chimney pieces ... they ought to be extremely fyne being valued soe excessively deare.’ Ashburnham may not have found time to see them, but trustingly he wrote to Hoare: ‘Mr Chapman shall be paid the forty pounds for the five marble chimney-pieces ... as for the cases to pack them upp, I will be at that charge and for the workmen to sett them upp alsoe.’ They were sent down to Great Park, Ampthill, but when they arrived it was discovered that they were not the ones Ashburnham had seen in London. A letter to a Mr Abraham Smythe, dated 3 November, expressed the patron’s displeasure that Chapman had failed to send the specified chimneypieces, two large ones of dove for the library and chamber, a white-veined and a small one, and ‘one large mixed marble’. Instead Chapman had sent ‘three mixed pieces’. Justifiably, Ashburnham, having paid the craftsman, felt ‘very unjustly & ill-used’ and proposed to ‘proceed against him’ if things were not immediately made right (ASH 842, 317-8). Ashburnham also wrote to Hoare: ‘I take myself to have been very unjustly and ill used in this matter, and if Chapman will not fairly change those that I bargained for, bought and paid for, I will immediately proceed against him at lawe and right myselfe that way if it be possible’. After this angry letter, Chapman sent the chimneypieces originally selected (2).
Edward Chapman was the father-in-law of Francis Bird. After the Jacobite rising of 1715 they were both obliged to register their estates as recusants. In his will, signed in 1727, Chapman described himself as a mason of St-Giles-in-the-Fields. He left his wife, Margaret, an annuity of £100 from the income on his leaseholds and tenements in the parish of St Andrew. A number of bequests were made to other family members including his daughter, Catherine. The residue of his considerable estate went to his daughter Hester Bird and her sculptor husband. This included a substantial property near Windsor.
Literary References: Vertue III, 49; Rendel 1972, 206; Gunnis 1968, 96; Lord 1986, 99; Whinney 1988, 448 n21
Archival References: Masons’ Co, Court Books, MS 5304/2, fol 13v; GPC
Will: PROB 11/633 114r-115r