William Chetwynd, 3rd Viscount Chetwynd

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William Richard Chetwynd, 3rd Viscount Chetwynd (1684 – 3 April 1770) was a British politician who spent many years in Parliament. He was the youngest son of John Chetwynd and the brother of Walter, the 1st and 2nd Viscount Chetwynd. He studied at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1706 he became secretary to his elder brother John in Turin, and in 1708 he was British Resident in Genoa. During the War of the Spanish Succession, the Chetwynd brothers lent money to General James Stanhope to help pay British troops in Spain. William returned to England in 1712 and married Honora Baker in 1715.

At the 1715 general election he and his brother Walter were elected Members of Parliament for Stafford, and he became a junior Lord of the Admiralty in 1717. They lost Stafford in 1722, but he was elected for Plymouth on the Navy interest that year. After voting with Viscount Bolingbroke he lost his Admiralty post in 1727 and did not stand for Plymouth in the 1727 election. He was re-elected MP for Stafford in 1734, replacing his brother, and was returned unopposed in 1741. In 1743 he was slightly injured in a duel in Parliament with Horatio Walpole.

In 1744 he became master of the mint, a post he held until 1769, and he served as under-secretary of state from 1745 to 1748. He was again returned for Stafford in 1747, 1754 and 1761, and, after inheriting his brother’s Irish peerage under a special remainder in 1767, continued to sit for Stafford in the 1768 election. He died on 3 April 1770, aged 86. He left two sons and four daughters, but disinherited his surviving son William, who became the 4th Viscount. He built and lived in Chetwynd House in Stafford, which later became the Stafford Post Office.