Francis Child (died 1713)

Sir Francis Child (1642–1713), of Hollybush House, Fulham, Middlesex and the Marygold by Temple Bar, London, was an English banker and politician. The goldsmith's business which he built up from 1671 later became one of the first London banks, Child & Co.

He was a Member (MP) of the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Great Britain for Devizes 1698 to 1702, 1705 to 1708 and 16 December 1710 – 1713 and the City of London 1702 to 1705. He was Lord Mayor of London 1698–9.

He was the son of Robert Child, clothier, of Headington in Wiltshire. He was born in 1642. He came to London at an early age, and was apprenticed in March 1656 to William Hall, a goldsmith of London, for a term of eight years, on the expiration of which he was admitted, 24 March 1664, to the freedom of the Goldsmiths' Company, and on 7 April 1664 to that of the city of London.

The firm of Child & Co. takes its origin from a family of London goldsmiths named Wheeler. John Wheeler, who carried on his business in Chepe, died in 1575. His son, also named John, moved into Fleet Street, and died in 1609. After him William Wheeler, probably his son, moved from his old shop to the Marygold, hitherto a tavern, next door to Temple Bar. He had a son, likewise named William Wheeler, who was admitted a member of the Goldsmiths' Company by patrimony on 27 April 1666. Child married Elizabeth, sister of the younger William Wheeler, aged 19, on 2 October 1671. Her father, the elder William Wheeler, had died in 1663, and his widow married Robert Blanchard, who succeeded to the business at the Marygold, and took Child into partnership, probably about the time of his marriage in 1671. In the little London Directory of 1677, the names of 'Blanchard and Child at the Marygold' are found among the goldsmiths 'that keep running cashes.'

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