In the late fourteenth century two branches of the ancient Champernowne family became established in Devon as a result of the successive marriages of Sir Richard Champernowne of Modbury. By his first marriage Sir Richard had a son whom he named after himself (and through whom Modbury descended to Hugh Champernowne*), while his second marriage produced a son called Alexander. The marriages of these sons and their sister Joan linked them in close kinship to the most prominent landowners of the region. While Richard married a sister of Sir William Bonville* (later Lord Bonville),
Their first surviving son, Roger Champernowne, the later MP, is first heard of in 1428 when, aged about 17, he joined the retinue of Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, for what was to be the earl’s final expedition to France. He was thus probably present at the siege of Orléans, and only returned home after Salisbury’s death in November.
Little over a year later, Champernowne was nevertheless appointed sheriff of Devon. Once again, it appears that he was out of his depth. While it was not uncommon for a sheriff to face allegations of misconduct after leaving office, the litany of misdemeanours with which he was charged was remarkable. It included breaches of the liberties of the royal duchy of Lancaster in making arrests, a failure to pay the annuities owing to the London priory of Holy Trinity from the fee farm of the city of Exeter, and general negligence in the execution of judicial writs.
Champernowne’s parliamentary colleague in 1437 was Sir John Speke*, with whom he was to clash just two years later in the context of a dispute over the manor of North Huish. This manor, held in the late fourteenth century by Sir John D’Aumarle, had by 1417 been acquired by D’Aumarle’s stepson, Nicholas Tremayne, who, shortly before his death in September 1438 settled it on his eldest son and heir, Thomas*. Yet before long the latter’s title was challenged by his younger brother, William, whose cause was taken up by Champernowne. The latter, so gossip among his household servants ran, intended to use the brothers’ dispute to seize the manor for himself, and in order to do so secured the services of one of the leading lawyers of his day, Nicholas Radford*. Thomas Tremayne for his part looked for support to Speke, a lesser (albeit Lincolns-Inn-educated) lawyer than Radford, but a landowner of far greater substance and standing in the wider county. It soon became apparent that the indiscrete William Tremayne was nothing short of a liability, and before the end of 1438 Champernowne and Radford cut their losses, although proceedings in various courts continued for some time thereafter.
At the time of Roger’s parents’ marriage, his grandfather, Sir Richard Champernowne, had provided them with an annual income of £40, but Alexander Champernowne’s survival until 1442 meant that Roger himself was probably in his thirties before he gained full control of his inheritance.
The full extent of Champernowne’s estates in Devon cannot readily be established, although his inheritance from his parents gave rise to a range of petty squabbles with tenants and neighbours over incursions into wood and pasture lands, damage done by wandering livestock, and attacks on servants, such as might preoccupy many of his contemporaries.
It is difficult to locate Champernowne exactly in the complex politics of the 1450s, which caused considerable unrest in his home county. Whereas his legitimate kinsmen of the Modbury line of the Champernownes were associated with their close relative, Lord Bonville, he, like his bastard cousins, seems to have made common cause with the earl of Devon. In July 1454 he was summoned to appear in Chancery alongside the earl’s sons Henry and Thomas, their cousin Sir Hugh Courtenay* of Boconnoc and the earl of Oxford’s brother Sir Robert de Vere*, another Courtenay man, to answer for certain riots.
Despite this, Champernowne’s allegiances seem to have become suspect, for he played no part in local administration in the first half of 1460, and the place at the very heart of the Yorkist regime which he filled in the aftermath of the battle of Northampton may suggest that he had provided some signal service to the earls of March, Warwick and Salisbury during their exile in Calais and following their triumphant return to England. In November 1460 he was entrusted with the shrievalty of Cornwall, an appointment which placed him alongside such stalwart supporters of the Yorkist cause as John Dynham of Nutwell and Humphrey Stafford IV* of Enmore who were respectively pricked as sheriffs of Devon and Somerset. Furthermore, in the summer of 1461, after Edward IV’s accession to the throne, Champernowne was added to the county bench in both Devon and Cornwall. Any further reward that he might have received from the new King was pre-empted by his death in mid November, having only just completed his term as sheriff.