CHATERLEY, Thomas

Despite his post in the royal household and three successive returns to Parliament, Thomas Chaterley’s career remains an obscure one, probably because it was cut short by premature death. Although direct evidence is lacking, it is probable that he was brother of Richard Chaterley, a lawyer with whom he sat as an MP for Derby in the last of his Parliaments. He first appears in the records when returned to represent Derby in the contentious Parliament of February 1447. By this date he was almost certainly a servant of the royal household, for on the following 20 Apr., six weeks after the dissolution, he was granted 6d. per day as his remuneration as a yeoman of the Crown and King’s serjeant.1 CPR, 1446-52, p. 34; CCR, 1441-7, p. 424; C219/15/4. Yet while his election, to this Parliament at least, is to be explained by his place in the Household, he does not seem to have been a carpet-bagger. His representative record is not the only thing to connect him with Derby: by the early 1440s his putative brother Richard had property there; and his household wages were assigned on the borough’s fee farm. Further, in 1449, he was described as a yeoman resident there when sued by Queen Margaret for illegally hunting in her park of Agardsley in the forest of Needwood (Staffordshire).2 Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1094; CP40/752, rot. 441. In 1457, when sued for a debt of £5 by his putative brother, he is described as ‘of Leek’ in Staffs., but it is not known how he came to have interests there: CP40/784, rot. 151.

Nevertheless, Chaterley’s wider responsibilities must have often kept him away from the town. On 13 Nov. 1448 he found himself at the church of St. Mary’s in Nottingham on royal business: with Robert Wylne*, another Derby man who had found a place in royal service, he questioned an executor of a canon of Southwell concerning a bequest. Two months later, on 18 Jan. 1449, he was again elected to Parliament. On the following 17 Feb., five days after this assembly had convened at Westminster, he was at the church of St Bride’s in Fleet Street to take an oath on the matter of the canon’s bequest.3 CCR, 1447-54, p. 125; C219/15/6. His third election occurred on the following 29 Oct. 1449 and he was thus a Member (probably a reluctant one) of the tempestuous assembly which brought down the duke of Suffolk. Even so, he was able to protect his own interests to the extent of securing an exemption from the Act of Resumption with regard to his household wages, and to further his local concerns by suing his fellow townsman, John Brydde*, in the court of common pleas for a debt of as much as £200. Since the defendant is described in this plea as former under sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, our MP’s action probably arose out of an obligation Brydde had offered him while holding that office in 1447-8.4 C219/15/7; PROME, xii. 128; CP40/756, rot. 240d.

A curious reference to Chaterley survives in a contemporary collection of miscellaneous information put together by one strongly supportive of the Yorkist cause. This includes the passage that, soon after the duke of York’s abortive rising at Dartford in March 1452, ‘was Chatturley, yeman of the Crowne, maymede, not withstondynge he was takyne at Derby with money makynge, and ladde to London’. The meaning is opaque with its implication that our MP was injured, seemingly in the King’s service opposing the duke of York, but was then arrested on suspicion of counterfeiting.5 Archaeologia, xxix. 326; C.L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 358, 360, 368. There is no evidence to suggest that he was involved in such a crime; yet it does appear that he was in the royal ranks at Dartford. On 13 July 1452, when the fortunes of the Household were recovering, he was one of a group of 13 lesser Household men corporately granted a reward of 100 marks, above £11 14s. 4d. they had already received as expenses. Since the grant refers to the ‘grete jeopardie charges and costes’ they had incurred on the King’s behalf, their services may have been connected with the suppression of the Dartford rising.6 E404/69/184; E403/796, m. 8.

Despite the suspicion of counterfeiting (if such it was) Chaterley maintained his place in the royal household. On 6 Apr. 1458 the King ordered the treasurer and barons of the Exchequer to treat him fairly in consideration of his good service. This writ of privy seal was dated at the monastery of St. Albans and it is probable that he was with the King there. Later, on 6 July 1459, he and the 12 other Household men rewarded with 100 marks had another assignmet for a much-delayed payment. There are no certain references to him after this date, and he may perhaps have fallen in the Lancastrian cause in the civil war of 1459-61. Alternatively, after the fall of his royal master, he may have found a new career: it is possible, although unlikely, that he is to be identified with the mercer to whom the Derbyshire peer, Walter Blount*, Lord Mountjoy, owed 90s. in 1474.7 E159/236, brevia Hil. rot. 4; E403/819, m. 6; Derbys. Wills (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xxvi), 15.