[Footnote 9: Query the late George Chalmers.]
_Sir John Vanbrugh_ (Vol. viii., p. 65. &c.).--In _An Account of the Life
and Death of Mr. Matthew Henry_, published in the year 1716, his biographer
having related that he was chosen a minister of a congregation of
Dissenters in the city of Chester, and that he went there to reside on the
first day of June, 1687, goes on to state (p. 75.):
"That city was then very happy in several worthy gentlemen that had
habitations there; they were not altogether strangers to Mr. Henry
before he came to live among them, but now they came to be his very
intimate acquaintance; some of these, as Alderman Mainwaring and Mr.
Vanbrugh, father to Sir John Vanbrugh, were in communion with the
Church of England, but they heard Mr. Henry on the week-day lectures,
and always treated him with great and serious respect."
This evidence serves to show that a Mr. Vanbrugh, who was living in Chester
in 1687, was the father of Sir John Vanbrugh. I have been told that in
former times there was a sugar-bakery at Chester. Did the father of Sir
John Vanbrugh carry on that business at Chester during any period of his
residence there?