CHANCY, Henry

Nothing is known about Chancy’s parents, but he may be presumed to be a native of Wiltshire, where his family held the manor of Sunton in Collingbourne Kingston.5 VCH Wilts. xvi. 133. Collingbourne Sunton was usually called Collingbourne ‘Southampton’. He was living at Collingbourne in November 1399 when the new King, Henry IV, granted him for life the office of warrener of Purbeck in Dorset, with a daily wage of 6d.6 CPR, 1399-1401, p. 58; CCR, 1402-5, p. 102. This must have been a reward for otherwise undocumented services to Henry before he seized the throne, perhaps even for providing military support in his bid to do so. Chancy was to hold the office without interruption until his death 43 years later.7 CPR, 1413-16, p. 156; 1422-9, p. 52. A ‘gentleman’, he married before 1408, when together with his wife Joan (later described as a ‘gentlewoman’) he sold a messuage and land at Winterbourne to William Alexander*, the prominent lawyer from Salisbury.8 Wilts. Feet of Fines, 283; KB27/693, rex rot. 11. It is very likely that either Chancy or his wife was related to the Wiltshire family of Thorpe residing at Boscombe, for he became very closely involved in the Thorpes’ affairs. Indeed, these preoccupied him for several years. Cecily, widow of Henry Thorpe† (d.1416) enfeoffed him of the manor of Burdon’s Ball and other property, which, following her instructions, he and his co-feoffees settled on her son and heir Thomas and his wife Agnes. Thomas died childless in 1419, leaving as heir to the Thorpe estates a brother, Ralph, still under age. Cecily had also entrusted Chancy and John Benger† with her manor of Oldbury on the Hill in Gloucestershire, on condition that after her death they would pay her debts as well as those of her late husband; and the same two men took possession of her manors of Yatesbury and Poulshot, which after satisfying her creditors they were to pass on to her kinsman John Erneley*. She died in March 1422, when Ralph Thorpe was still short of his majority by a few months.9 CIPM, xxi. nos. 42, 928-9; xxii. nos. 160, 161. Chancy and Benger promptly obtained at the Exchequer the young man’s wardship and marriage, and by agreement with the treasurer of England in May that year they rendered the extent of the property and paid £113 6s. 8d. for the marriage.10 CFR, xiv. 427, 436-7. In the following year they completed the settlement of Yatesbury and Poulshot as they had promised Cecily.11 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Money-Kyrle mss, 1720/247. The heir made proof of age in May 1423.12 CIPM, xxii. 226. Ralph Thorpe is wrongly described by the editors of this volume as gds. of Henry and Cecily, rather than their son (as correctly stated in the inq. itself). See The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 600-1.

Meanwhile, Chancy had been named as a collector of parliamentary subsidies in Wiltshire in December 1421 and again less than a year later. In January 1423 he obtained confirmation of his patent as warrener of Purbeck from the council of the young King Henry VI, and made sure that orders were sent to the Exchequer to allow his fee to be deducted from the issues of Dorset.13 CPR, 1422-9, p. 52; E159/199, brevia Hil. rot. 13d. He then secured election to the Parliament which met on 20 Oct. that year as a representative for Great Bedwyn, situated just a few miles to the north of his home. Several of the MPs for Great Bedwyn in this period were connected with Sir William Sturmy*, the prominent landowner, diplomat and former Speaker, who not only lived in the neighbourhood (at Wolf Hall) but also held the lease of the borough by grant of Joan of Navarre, the queen-dowager. Chancy’s fellow MP, Richard Hardene*, was one of Sturmy’s feoffees, and although there is no surviving evidence to link Chancy himself quite so closely with Sir William, the two men were later (in 1426) associated as witnesses to deeds relating to land at Collingbourne ‘Valence’.14 Wilts. Hist. Centre, Savernake Estate mss, 9/12/7-10. It is not known when or for what reason Chancy was granted a life-annuity of £5 from the issues of the Wiltshire manor of Hasilden by Reynold West, Lord de la Warre, but he was receiving it by 1436.15 E163/7/31/1.

An argumentative man, in the 1420s and 1430s Chancy was engaged in a number of lawsuits, often making allegations that his goods or crops at Marlborough and Collingbourne had been stolen.16 CP40/647, rots. 16, 132d; 688, rot. 18. One of those he accused in 1431 of breaking his closes and stealing items worth £20 was his own son, Nicholas,17 CP40/680, rot. 18d while a year later he attended the court of common pleas in person to bring a plea of debt against Richard Hardene, formerly his companion in the Commons.18 CP40/684, rot. 143. More obscure are Chancy’s dealings with John Frank, the clerk of the Parliaments. Several years earlier, in 1419, he had entered recognizances at the staple at Salisbury promising to pay Frank £40 before April 1420, but had failed to do so. No action was taken against him until April 1428, when a writ was sent to the sheriff to pursue and arrest him. The quarrel with Frank, if such there was, reached a resolution in 1433, when Chancy and his son Thomas entered into a bond in £100 to Frank (now master of the rolls), to guarantee that he might peacefully hold ‘their’ manor of Buttermere for the rest of his life. Buttermere duly returned to Henry Chancy at Frank’s death in 1438 and in May 1439 he and Thomas released Frank’s executors from all legal actions. It may be that the transactions were part of the process of the purchase of the manor by the Chancys, who were expanding their landed interests in the area of Wiltshire near their home.19 C241/221/17; CCR, 1429-35, p. 253; 1435-41, p. 269. VCH Wilts. xvi. 85 states that Buttermere was held by Frank from bef. 1411, and that he sold it to Thomas Chancy in about 1433. Frank was still in possession in 1433-4: C88/115, no. 85. Chancy occasionally served as a juror at inquisitions post mortem held at Marlborough, doing so for example following the deaths in 1434 of Joan, Lady Cobham, and Elizabeth, daughter and coheir of (Sir) Richard Hankford*.20 C139/65/37, 40. That year he had been listed among the men of Wiltshire required to take the generally-administered oath not to maintain those who broke the peace.21 CPR, 1429-36, p. 371. Yet shortly afterwards his own wife Joan came under suspicion for doing precisely that. Precepts were sent to the sheriff of Wiltshire to arrest her and bring her to the King’s bench to answer for a trespass of which she stood indicted. When she failed to appear in court instructions were sent for her to be brought at Hilary term 1435, but the further course of the suit, or details of her alleged misdemeanours, are not recorded.22 KB27/693, rex rot. 11.

On 6 Sept. 1435, together with his two sons, our MP attested the Wiltshire elections to the Parliament summoned to meet in October, endorsing the return of Sir William Sturmy’s grandson and coheir John Seymour I* as one of the shire knights.23 C219/14/5. Another Member of the same Parliament, representing Ludgershall, was William Ludlow II, long a prominent figure in the locality, and it was with Ludlow that Chancy agreed to share his post as warrener of Purbeck with effect from September 1437. It may be that the King, now having attained his majority, was reviewing grants made by his father and grandfather as a likely source for patronage to offer to those like Ludlow who were members of his Household. There seems to have been no ill will between the Chancys and Ludlow over this loss of income, however, for both Henry and his son Thomas stood surety for him in the Exchequer a year later.24 CCR, 1441-7, p. 85 (the letters patent have not been found); CFR, xvii. 50.

Their relationship with a much more powerful Wiltshire landowner was far less satisfactory, for Thomas was among those whom Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, accused of poaching in his local chases and warrens in Michaelmas term 1439. At the same time one Alice Mallewayne accused our MP in the common pleas of failing to make proper account as her receiver. He was put in exigent, with bail provided by his sons Thomas and Nicholas Chancy (the latter now described as ‘of Newbury, Berkshire’) and two Wiltshire lawyers, John Uffenham* and Nicholas Wotton II*, but was outlawed for failing to appear in court to answer the charge. He successfully sued for a pardon of outlawry on 2 May 1440.25 CP40/715, rots. 275d, 424; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 332-3.

Chancy died shortly before 20 Nov. 1442.26 CCR, 1441-7, p. 85. It appears that his elder son and heir Thomas was left in financial difficulties, which caused him to sell the family manor of Collingbourne Sunton to his father’s old colleague John Benger two years later, and also to grant a rent of £10 from the same and Buttermere to Thomas Norris*. By unexplained means, Buttermere then came into the possession of William Ludlow, who in April 1447 leased it back to Thomas Chancy, on condition that the £10 rent was now to be paid to Richard Ludlow and John Erle*, to whom Norris had conveyed it.27 Savernake Estate mss, 9/11/3, 5; CCR, 1441-7, pp. 301, 350, 464-5; Wilts. Feet of Fines, 576. In 1454 Benger alleged that Nicholas Chancy had forged a deed whereby Collingbourne Sunton had been settled in jointure on his brother Thomas and his wife Joan, da. of Peter Shotesbrooke, a kinsman of Sir Robert Shotesbrooke*: KB27/774, rot. 71d. Meanwhile, in June 1446 Thomas had been pardoned his outlawry for failing to answer in a suit for debt.28 CPR, 1441-6, p. 386. He made a final quitclaim of Buttermere to William Ludlow 20 years later,29 CCR, 1461-8, p. 369. but the manor was afterwards the subject of a suit in Chancery between their descendants, after William Chancy ‘pretended’ to have a title to part of it and refused to relinquish deeds and evidences.30 C1/145/10.