CHEYNE, John II (c.1423-89), of Fen Ditton, Cambs.

Born shortly after the accession of Henry VI, Cheyne was some eight or nine years old when his father sent him to the Cambridgeshire priory of Anglesey for board and schooling. Cambs. Archs., Anglesey priory recs. L1/30. A John Cheyne entered L. Inn in 1446, but there is no evidence that the MP was a lawyer: L. Inn Adm. i. 10; R. Virgoe, ‘Parl. of 1449-50’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1964), 270. While still a young man he served as escheator in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire and sat in his only known Parliament. During his term as escheator he attended the installation of Thomas Bourgchier as bishop of Ely in March 1447. Cambridge Univ. Lib., Ely Diocesan recs., G1/4 (Reg. Bourgchier), f. 12. Although he appears not to have held office in the episcopal liberty, he did stand surety (along with Bourgchier’s servant, John Ansty*) when the duke of Buckingham and other prominent relatives of the bishop received the keeping of the temporalities of the archbishopric of Canterbury in April 1454, shortly before Bourgchier was translated to that see. CFR, xix. 86. He and Ansty were again mainpernors when Buckingham and the others received another, backdated, grant of the temporalities on 14 May 1455. CPR, 1452-61, p. 233.

Although Cheyne entered the Commons at a relatively early age, his father’s standing in Cambridgeshire must have assisted his candidature. He also had influential in-laws: his sister had become the wife of a yeoman of the Crown, John Say II*, three years earlier, and he himself had recently married one of the coheirs of the Nottinghamshire knight, Sir Thomas Rempston, a prominent servant of the Lancastrian dynasty. While still an MP, he and Sir Mauncer Marmyon* bound themselves in two recognizances in February 1450, as security that they would appear in Chancery to pay 100 marks to John Sutton, Lord Dudley. In the event, when Marmyon’s son and heir, John, came to that court on the day given to pay the first instalment of this sum, Dudley failed to appear. CCR, 1447-54, pp. 175, 181. Cheyne may have come to know Sir Mauncer through Sir Thomas Rempston, who had in the past acted as a feoffee for the Marmyon family, Add. Chs. 21035-6. but the reason for these recognizances is unknown.

A closer associate of Cheyne’s than Marmyon was his brother-in-law, John Say. Before entering Parliament, he had become one of Say’s feoffees, a position he held for the rest of the latter’s life. e.g. CPR, 1446-52, p. 253; CP25(1)/30/99/78; CAD, i. B562; iii. A5147-8. In October 1454 he, along with Say and Ralph Gray I*, acquired the custody of the lands of his half-brother, Philip Butler*, who had died the previous year, along with the marriage of Butler’s heir, John, then about 19 years old. CPR, 1452-61, p. 155; C139/149/27. After Say’s death in 1478, Cheyne and John Butler, acting as feoffees, conveyed his manor at Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, to William Say† and his wife. Among others for whom Cheyne was a feoffee were the Fynderne family, the Essex esquire, Hugh Nailinghurst, William Taylard†, another of his brothers-in-law, Henry Barley*, and Thomas Freman of Haddenham in the Isle of Ely. CAD, i. C1105; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 759; iii. 319; CPR, 1476-85, p. 116; CCR, 1476-85, nos. 343-5; C1/26/481; E13/166, rot. 17d. As Freman’s feoffee, he became embroiled in a Chancery suit brought by John Culham* of Abbots Ripton, Huntingdonshire in the later 1450s. Culham claimed that Freman, now no longer alive and to whom he referred as his ‘cousin’, had sold to him a manor at Haddenham in the Isle of Ely. His complaint was that Cheyne and another of Freman’s feoffees, John Prysote*, c.j.c.p., had refused to release that property to them. In the bill, he claimed to have paid the whole purchase price, save £21, during the lifetime of Freman, who had given him a bond for £300 as a guarantee that the feoffees would make the desired release. Prysote’s answer to the bill has survived. He said that Freman, shortly before his death, had requested him not to release the manor unless and until Culham complied with the sale agreement. He added that he would release the property when he received proof of the proper fulfilment of the agreement. It would appear that Culham was subsequently able to satisfy the judge in this regard, since in April 1459 Prysote and Cheyne made a formal quitclaim to him. C1/26/481; CCR, 1454-61, p. 390.

After his father’s death at the end of December 1461, Cheyne began to play a much more active role in the administration of his county, although he was already a j.p., having joined the Cambridgeshire bench shortly after the accession of Edward IV. Given the many administrative appointments he received in the 1460s and 1470s, the royal pardons he purchased in May 1462, February 1464 and while sheriff in January 1475 were perhaps intended to exculpate him from any shortcomings as an office-holder. C67/45, mm. 10, 30; 49, m. 2. Just nine days after the MP’s term in the shrievalty expired, Henry Golyff sued him in the Exchequer for making a wrongful seizure of livestock at Boxworth, Cambs. while sheriff: E13/161, rot. 23. Upon succeeding to his patrimony, worth at least £130 p.a., E179/81/103. he was a natural candidate for knighthood, an honour he received immediately prior to the coronation of Elizabeth Wydeville, in May 1465. Soon afterwards he was serving overseas on behalf of the Yorkist Crown, which in the following month appointed him to an embassy charged with negotiating with the Hanseatic League at a diet it was holding in Hamburg. It also empowered him and his fellow ambassadors, James Goldwell, dean of Salisbury, Dr. Henry Sharp and two burgesses of Bishop’s Lynn, Henry Bermyngeham* and Walter Cony*, to treat with the king of Denmark and to conclude a treaty with the king of Poland. The mission did not go entirely to plan. The envoys had yet to leave England a month after their appointment and difficulties between them and the League’s representatives soon arose when they finally reached Hamburg in September 1465. A committee of learned men who could converse in Latin helped to solve the first of these, the language barrier, but the second, namely the demands of Lübeck and Bremen for immediate compensation for injuries that their merchants had suffered at the hands of the English, proved insurmountable. This was because Cheyne and his fellows lacked the authority to discuss that matter, even though they were empowered to sign a peace treaty. All attempts at compromise failed and the diet broke up in early October, although the English party did not return home completely empty handed, since they did manage to conclude a treaty of alliance with the Danish king, subsequently ratified by Edward IV in 1466. Scofield, i. 391-2; C76/149, m. 18; P. Chaplais, English Med. Diplomatic Practice, ii. nos. 56-58.

Notwithstanding his part in this embassy and his role in local government under the Yorkists, Cheyne’s political leanings are difficult to ascertain. He remained a j.p. during Henry VI’s Readeption and following Edward IV’s return from exile, but was finally dismissed from the bench in December 1483 in the aftermath of the duke of Buckingham’s rebellion against Richard III. In another pardon, taken out in October 1484, he is referred to as one of the late j.p.s of ‘E. Bastard nuper dicti E nuper Regis Anglie quinti’, C67/52, m. 11. but what, if any, political connotations should be read into this is hard to say. His dismissal might have arisen from much more prosaic considerations, like old age and infirmity, for less than a year later he settled his manor and advowson at Eaton Socon in Bedfordshire (without the King’s licence as it subsequently transpired) on his elder son, Thomas, to the use of his will. CFR, xxii. no. 294.

In his later decades Cheyne devoted much of his energies to a series of disputes over land which had begun shortly after coming into his own. Following Sir Thomas Rempston’s death in October 1458, the King had ordered the partition of his property between Elizabeth Cheyne and her two sisters, the wives of Sir Brian Stapleton* and Richard Bingham, The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 194; CFR, xix. 225-6. although Robert Rempston, Sir Thomas’s brother and heir male, was able to make good his claim to part of the Rempston estates, the manor of Arnold in Nottinghamshire, a couple of years later. CP40/797, rot. 136d. Elizabeth’s share comprised at least five manors in Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Huntingdonshire, CIPM Hen. VII, i. 568-74; VCH Hunts. iii. 29. but in the early 1460s she and Cheyne sought the former Rempston manor in Bingham, Nottinghamshire, as well. Bingham was part of the share allotted to Isabel, Sir Brian Stapleton’s wife, but the Cheynes, taking action against several Rempston feoffees in the Chancery, tried to claim that Sir Thomas had granted the reversion of the manor to them upon their marriage. Their suit was unsuccessful, for the manor remained in the Stapletons’ hands. R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, i. 139, 273; C1/29/498. Later that decade, however, Cheyne and Stapleton acted together as Richard Bingham’s pledges in relation to a Chancery suit that the latter and two feoffees of the Rempston family, Sir John Markham and Sir John Say, brought against Ralph, the son of John Sacheverell*. Ralph had recently entered the Derbyshire manor of Hopwell, another former Rempston property, despite the fact that John Sacheverell had sold it to Sir Thomas Rempston’s father. C1/31/158.

One of the feoffees of the Rempston manors in Derbyshire and Lincolnshire manors that passed to the Cheynes was Thomas Burgoyne*, CIPM Hen. VII, i. 569-70. against whose family the MP fought his most protracted and complicated land dispute. The quarrel revolved around the manor of ‘Colvyles’ in Long Stanton and the appurtenant right of patronage over the rectory of St. Michael’s church in the same parish. In the early fifteenth century, the manor had belonged to a namesake and relative of Cheyne’s from that branch of the family settled at Long Stanton. In some way related to the Cheynes of Fen Ditton, this John Cheyne entered the Church late in life, becoming rector of St. Michael’s in 1433. He was presented to the parish by Burgoyne’s father, John*, who was a feoffee of ‘Colvyles’ but who appears to have acquired the manor by that date, although perhaps only through a temporary arrangement made between the Cheyne and Burgoyne families. Whatever the case, when Thomas Burgoyne presented a new rector, Henry Silvester, to the living in 1466, his family was in de facto possession. Trouble began when Sir John Cheyne entered ‘Colvyles’ in May 1471, a year after Burgoyne’s death. He evicted Burgoyne’s widow, Alice, and her feoffees, as well as a tenant for life of an estate at Long Stanton, Thomas Boleyn, brother of Geoffrey* and master of Gonville Hall, Cambridge. Boleyn sued Cheyne and his associates in the court of common pleas, while Alice and her younger son retaliated by entering a close, presumably belonging to the manor. Caught in an invidious position, Silvester resigned his living in 1472, whereupon Cheyne presented a successor. In response, Alice appealed to the bishop of Ely, but a subsequent inquisition held in Chesterton parish church the following 12 July upheld the presentation. Instead of backing down, however, she presented her own candidate – Thomas Hunden – to the living on the same day. She also filed bills in Chancery, in an attempt to have her presentation upheld and to impel several of her feoffees to support her rights. Faced with rival presentees, the bishop was obliged to order another inquiry, held at Girton the following month. Cheyne’s presentation was again upheld and the earlier presentation of Silvester by Thomas Burgoyne was ruled ‘de facto ... non de jure’. CP40/699, rot. 99; 840, rot. 129; Add. Chs. 22597-8; VCH Cambs. ix. 234; C1/41/221; 44/90; 47/230-2; Ely Diocesan recs., G1/5 (Reg. Gray), ff. 84v-86. Alice died the following year, in the midst of another suit concerning Long Stanton that Cheyne’s elder son and others had taken out against her and her second son, Thomas. CP40/847, rot. 117. Cheyne again presented to the advowson in March 1474, Add. 5826, f. 103. after which the dispute appears to have died down, perhaps partly because Burgoyne’s sons were by then quarrelling with each other. C1/51/341. Nevertheless, ‘Colvyles’ was not one of Cheyne’s manors when he died, CIPM Hen. VII, i. 571. and in 1492 Burgoyne’s second son and namesake successfully sued the MP’s heir for the advowson of St. Michael’s. CP40/920, rot. 308d. This was possibly a collusive action, intended to settle title after the two families had reconciled their differences. Thomas Burgoyne presented to the rectory in 1505, and it remained in the Burgoyne family until the reign of Elizabeth I. VCH Cambs. ix. 234.

Even if the mid 1470s saw a lull in the Cheyne-Burgoyne dispute, the MP was pursuing another quarrel before the end of the same decade. In 1477 he sued John Tyringham, a Buckinghamshire esquire, over a manor at Pavenham, Bedfordshire, once held by the parties’ mutual great-grandfather, Sir Laurence Pavenham†. Through a partition of 1421, Cheyne’s grandmother, Katherine, had received one moiety, which became known as ‘Cheynes manor’, and the Tyringhams the other, which continued to be called ‘Pavenham manor’. In his suit Cheyne claimed that Tyringham was denying him of his rightful share of the property but the outcome of this suit is unknown. CP40/864, rot. 409; CFR, xiv. 401; VCH Beds. iii. 77. Pavenham did not feature in the inquisitions post mortem held after Cheyne’s death although his son and successor, Thomas Cheyne, did possess a manorial moiety there at his own death in 1514. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 571; C142/29/22. Late in life, Cheyne went to law over another partitioned manor, Blatherwycke in Northamptonshire, and began an action in Chancery over the rectory of Girton, Cambridgeshire. The owner of a moiety of Blatherwycke, formerly the property of his Engaine ancestors, he sued the holders of the other moiety, John Ormond and his wife, the daughter of Sir William Chaworth, in 1487, claiming that he had a right to the entire manor. Thomas Cheyne would pursue a like action over Blatherwycke following his father’s death. CP40/901, rot. 30; 922, rot. 317. Shortly after beginning this suit, Cheyne presented a bill to the chancellor, to complain that two canons of Lincoln, Dr. Robert Belamy and William Stevyns, were detaining a deed relating to the presentation to the church at Girton. The rectory belonged to Ramsey abbey but, according to the bill, he had made an exchange with that institution in 1466, by which he was to present the next rector of Girton and the abbot would present to the church of Broughton, Lincolnshire, a living that had passed to the Cheynes from the Rempstons, at the next vacancy there. As it happened, there was no vacancy at Girton when he submitted his bill, and the then incumbent, William Maltster, rector since 1455, would survive him. It is impossible to ascertain from Cheyne’s now partly illegible bill why the defendants might have wanted to obstruct his arrangement with the abbey. There is no record of their response although an endorsement on the bill noted a ruling of January 1489, to the effect that Stevyns (who coincidentally or not succeeded Malster at Girton in 1493) had no case to answer. C1/89/66; VCH Cambs. ix. 124-5; Biog. Reg. Univ. Cambridge to 1500 ed. Emden, 53, 555.

Whatever the outcome of this case, Cheyne lived for only another six months following the ruling exculpating Stevyns, dying on 14 July 1489. In his will, dated the previous 31 July, he requested burial alongside his already dead wife, Elizabeth Rempston, and his father in the priory church of St. Giles, Barnwell. It would appear that he had married again after Elizabeth’s death, since the will refers to her as his ‘first’ wife. It does not, however, mention his second wife at all, let alone by name. For his tomb, he ordered a sepulchre similar to his father’s, although both monuments have long since vanished. The Cheynes enjoyed a close relationship with Barnwell priory and John’s name joined that of Laurence among the benefactors listed in its Liber Memorandum. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 568-74; PCC 24 Milles; VCH Cambs. ii. 246. Cheyne left to his second son William various lands in Fen Ditton and elsewhere in Cambridgeshire that he had bought rather than inherited. William’s marriage to Elizabeth, the widow of William Allington (killed at Bosworth in 1485), strengthened the connexion between the Allington and Cheyne families, but required a papal dispensation (obtained in February 1488) as they were related in the second and third degrees of affinity. VCH Cambs. vi. 71; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 994; CPL, xiv. 306. William Cheyne’s elder brother Thomas succeeded to the bulk of Cheyne’s estates, comprising 13 manors and a moiety of another in Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Derbyshire, Essex, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire. CIPM Hen. VII, i. 568-74.

One of the MP’s personal possessions survives to this day. An illuminated manuscript volume, it is a copy of John Lydgate’s celebrated Fall of Princes which was made for Cheyne (whose arms are depicted on folios 1, 36v and 185v) in about 1460. Pierpont Morgan Lib., New York, MS M.124.