John Chesshyre

Sir John Chesshyre (11 November 1662 – 15 May 1738) was an English lawyer who rose to the position of king's first serjeant.

The family had been Royalists in the Civil War and they had sustained severe financial penalties when the Parliamentarians were ruling the country.

[2] For most of his professional life he lived in London, either in his house in Isleworth, which was then in Middlesex, or in his other home in Essex Street, off the Strand, or in his chambers in the Inner Temple.

He had expressed a wish to be buried in Runcorn parish church but he wanted "no lying in state nor pompous train of coaches into Cheshire nor any unnecessary attendance".

[1] In 1733, Chesshyre built one of the earliest free libraries in England at Halton and left an endowment in his will for its maintenance.