Talk:Charles Peers

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Sir Charles Peers was Lord Mayor of London. He appears on the page "Lists of Lord Mayors of London". He would not have been elected as such unless he was eminent in his time. He was also chairman of the East India Company which had more power and governed more people than most governments. This is a stub which is an admission that the research has not yet been done on a man who was at the peak of two major institutions. He was also knighted, showing too that the crown also recognised his work.Rod Oliphant (talk) 10:07, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Sir Charles Reed Peers (the architect) is a descendant. I'm not sure the present article is right about the ancestor being both chairman of the East India Company and Lord Mayor of London – it may be conflating a father and son there (the name Charles got reused a lot) – I shall have to ask my mother – a grand-daughter of Charles Reed, whose second son, Robert Witherington Peers, documented the patrilineal history quite extensively (IIRC, back to a Peers who escaped to London from the Welsh border marches in the 1300s to avoid the consequences of being caught cattle rustling). Over several centuries a family in which the middle name Witherington recurs rose from rags to riches, providing an echo of the Dick Wittington stories, which pack it all into one life-time – leading to Robert Witherington being nick-named Dick. Either the chairman, the mayor or (if those are one and the same) a son (but definitely called Charles) purchased (and perhaps improved; my memory claimed he built it, but the village's page here records its earlier history) Chislehampton Hall in Oxfordshire, a great Georgian pile that Charles Reed inherited (though of a cadet branch; the descendants of an older brother died out, leaving the estate to a country parson) and left to his oldest son, Charles (Dick's older brother, known as Jack; a great-uncle whose 75th birthday I dimly remember, at The Hall, probably in the late 1960s); on his death it was sold to pay death duties (also, a vast Georgian pile needs a whole household of servants to run, which is rather impractical); his oldest son (Charles) was quite content to be a farmer. Michael Peers is a grand-son of Charles Reeds' younger brother. From fallible memory, so don't rely on it, but perhaps it gives some clues for where to find more details. I'll try to remember to ask my mother for more when I can, but I probably can't cite useful public sources even then. -- Eddy 84.212.132.95 (talk) 10:27, 25 June 2020 (UTC)