Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/250

Child became partners in Childs' bank, and among the most valuable of the documents now in the possession of the firm are the old books of Alderman Backwell, who carried on business in Lombard Street, and acted as banker to Charles II, his queen, the queen mother, the Duke of York, the Duke of Monmouth, Prince Rupert, Samuel Pepys, and many other celebrities (, Marygold, p. 42).

By his will, proved 2 Dec. 1713 in the Prerogative Court, Canterbury, Child left legacies to the poor of his native town of Headington, and of the parishes of Fulham and St. Dunstan-in-the-West. By the alliances of his descendants he was an ancestor of the Earls of Jersey and Westmorland.

 CHILD, FRANCIS, the younger (1684?–1740), banker and lord mayor, a younger son of Sir Francis Child the elder [q.v.], was born probably in 1684, as the record of his admission to the freedom of the city of London is dated 12 March 1705. On the death of his elder brother Sir Robert Child in 1721, Child became the head of the banking firm, which was then carried on under the style of Francis Child & Co. He was also elected on 10 Oct. in the same year to succeed his brother and father as alderman of the ward of Farringdon without, and the following year he became sheriff, with Alderman Humphrey Parsons as his colleague. In 1722 he served the office of master of the Goldsmiths' Company, and was returned to parliament as one of the representatives of the city of London. In the next parliament, which met in 1727, he was elected one of the members for Middlesex, and also in the succeeding parliament which met in 1734. He purchased in 1726 an estate at Northall for 19,501l., which now forms part of the Osterley estate. From 1727 to 1740 he was president of Christ's Hospital, and his portrait is preserved in the board-room of that institution; another portrait, painted in his robes as lord mayor, is to be found at Osterley Park. In 1729 Child introduced a new form of promissory note, with a picture of Temple Bar in the left-hand corner. These were worded very similarly to the Bank of England notes of the present day, and were discontinued, as Mr. F. G. H. Price considers, before 1800 (Account of ye Marygold, p. 25). Child became lord mayor in 1731, and appointed as his chaplain Dr. John Middleton, rector of St. Peter's, Cornhill. Towards the close of his mayoralty, on 28 Sept. in the following year, he attended with the court of aldermen, sheriffs, and other officials to congratulate George II on his safe return from Hanover. On this occasion the king conferred the honour of knighthood upon the lord mayor, Alderman John Barnard, and Alderman Henry Hankey, one of the sheriffs; addresses to the king and queen were read by Mr. Baron Thompson, the recorder, and their majesties returned gracious answers. Child was elected a director of the East India Company in the year of his mayoralty, and was reelected in 1732. He died on 20 April 1740, and was buried at Fulham on 28 April. He does not appear to have married, and was succeeded in the banking firm as senior partner by his brother Samuel, whose descendants have retained the position of senior partner to the present day (, Account of ye Marygold).

 CHILD, JOHN (1638?–1684), baptist preacher, born at Bedford about 1638, was apprenticed to a handicraft; after a while he adopted another calling, and removed to Newport Pagnel, Buckinghamshire, where he lived for some years, married twice, had several children, and increased in wealth. He held 'the baptism of believers,' joining himself to the baptists, or, as they were then generally called, 'anabaptists,' and for some years was in the habit of preaching occasionally. About 1679 he removed to London. Fear of