CHEYNE, Laurence (c.1396-1461), of Fen Ditton, Cambs.

There was more than one branch of the Cheyne family in Cambridgeshire in the early fifteenth century, but Laurence’s ancestry is reasonably discernible. By the 1240s, a Cheyne held the manor of ‘Cheyneys’ at Long Stanton, which passed down successive generations to the MP’s father. Sir William Cheyne was probably the man who was twice sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in Richard II’s reign and helped to suppress the Peasants’ Revolt. His eldest son and heir, John, held ‘Cheyneys’ in Henry IV’s reign, but died sometime between 1428 and 1436. VCH Cambs. ix. 223, 225; CPR, 1381-5, pp. 70, 71, 85, 139, 246, 257; CP, v. 80. Laurence, who succeeded John, first appears in January 1419 when he stood surety for Sir Thomas Chaworth*. CFR, xv. 256, 261. Chaworth was the husband of Laurence’s half-sister, Isabel, one of the daughters of Katherine Cheyne by her second husband, Sir Thomas Aylesbury†. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 87-89. At about the same time, Laurence and his feoffees obtained possession of a manor at Eaton Socon, Bedfordshire, from his mother, since in May 1419 they received a pardon for doing so without the King’s licence. CPR, 1416-22, p. 217. This was her property –she had inherited it as the daughter of one of the coheiresses of Sir Thomas Engaine (d.1367) – but, presumably, the aim was to give her son some independence during her lifetime. VCH Beds. iii. 191; CP, v. 80. Upon Katherine Cheyne’s death in 1436, the dower rights she had held in his properties at Fen Ditton and at Dadlington, Leicestershire, terminated. Furthermore, he inherited the right to a moiety of the Bedfordshire manor of Pavenham that had passed to her in 1414, following the deaths of her brothers without issue, as well as at least five manors in Northamptonshire, Huntingdonshire and Essex that formerly had belonged to the Engaine family. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 87-88; CFR, xiv. 401.

Cheyne married in his mother’s lifetime, taking for his bride the widow of the Hertfordshire knight Sir Philip Butler in early 1422. Elizabeth Butler’s father was the eminent judge, John Cockayne, for whom her new husband subsequently acted as an executor when he died seven years later. The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 610; CFR, xv. 282. In the right of his wife, Cheyne gained an interest in the Butler manors at Watton and Sele in Hertfordshire and Bromham in Bedfordshire, all of which she had held jointly with her previous husband, as well as that of Higham Gobion in the latter county, which she held in dower. CIPM, xxi. 537, 539; C139/149/27. In mid 1423, he was residing in Bedfordshire, presumably at Eaton Socon or one of the Butler manors there. CFR, xv. 39. By July 1431, however, it was of the diocese of Ely that he and his wife obtained a papal indult to keep a portable altar, CPL, viii. 361. and he was living at Fen Ditton when he came to take the countrywide oath not to maintain breakers of the peace three years later. CPR, 1429-36, p. 385. In all likelihood, he had moved back to Cambridgeshire before the 1430s, given that he had attended the election of the knights of the shire for that county to the Parliament of 1426. His name appeared at the head of the list of attestors, as it would do in the return made for the Parliament of 1433.

Cheyne was himself elected as a knight of the shire on at least four occasions. He was more than qualified to sit in the Commons, since subsidy assessments of 1436 and 1450 valued his estates at £106 and £130 p.a. respectively. E179/81/103; 240/268. On at least one occasion he was occupied with parliamentary business while not an MP, for in 1433 he and others, including Thomas Coventre I*, successfully petitioned the Parliament of that year for a licence to grant the rents of six messuages in Oxford to the Benedictine nunnery at Littlemore, in exchange for property in Cambridgeshire belonging to that house. RP, iv. 467 (cf. PROME, xi. 155). In the same year, Cheyne sued John Clopton, who had taken over briefly as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire in the autumn of 1432, following the death in office of (Sir) John Shardelowe*. By means of this action, he sought his wages as an MP in the Parliament of 1432, claiming that neither Shardelowe nor Clopton had paid the £14 4s. due to him for the 71 days he had spent attending and travelling to and from that assembly. E5/3/10. He had sat in the Parliament alongside the influential Henry Somer*, for whom he became a feoffee. King’s Coll., Cambridge, GRA/6.

Later in the same decade, Cheyne was a leading protagonist in the controversial Cambridgeshire election to the Parliament of 1439. The established political force in the county at this time was John, Lord Tiptoft†, but it appears that some of its gentry had become dissatisfied with his dominance. Although associated with Tiptoft in a land transaction as recently as June 1439, Cheyne and two other leading gentry of the shire, William Allington II* and William Cotton*, had allied themselves with the peer’s young rival, Sir James Ormond (or Butler), later earl of Wiltshire, by the time Parliament was called. They and other followers of Ormond appear to have engaged in large-scale canvassing – probably a mixture of threats and promises – against the candidates linked with Tiptoft. A first attempt to hold the election on 16 Nov. was aborted, but on the 19th Allington and Cotton were elected. Despite Tiptoft’s defeat, the feud between him and Ormond continued, but whether Cheyne involved himself in its later stages is unknown. R. Virgoe, E. Anglian Soc. ed. Barron, Rawcliffe and Rosenthal, 45-52; CP25/1/292/69/225. Afterwards, Cheyne remained linked with Ormond, for whom he acted in a conveyance of land in early 1443, CAD, ii. B3752, 3789. and who appointed him a feoffee of the Leicestershire manor of Ashby de la Zouche over 15 years later. CPR, 1461-7, p. 550. He also maintained a connexion with Allington, whose heir married his daughter, Mary, Cambridge Univ. Lib., Ely Diocesan recs., G1/5 (Reg. Gray), f. 27v. and who was his co-plaintiff in a suit they brought in the court of common pleas against Richard Forster I*, one of Tiptoft’s estate officers, in the early 1440s. CP40/724, rot. 410; 726, rot. 379d; 728, rot. 284d; 729, rot. 358d; 730, rot. 210. Cheyne sat in the last of his known Parliaments within the lifetime of Tiptoft, who died in 1443.

The election of Cheyne to at least four Parliaments is one mark of his local importance; another is his prominence in local administration. Early in his career, his wife’s interests in Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire gave him a role in the government of those counties. Subsequently, he served two terms as sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire and regularly gained appointment to ad hoc commissions. Although never a member of the quorum, he was the most regular attender at the quarter sessions throughout his career as a Cambridgeshire j.p. E372/269-303. He cannot always have welcomed his workload, for in November 1441 the King granted him an exemption for life from assizes, juries and other local positions of responsibility. Although never, apparently, formally a member of the Household, the grant’s description of him as ‘King’s esquire’ is appropriate in the sense that he was something of a workhorse in the administration of his shire. CPR, 1436-41, p. 472.

Between his third and fourth Parliaments, Cheyne was a feoffee of a family settlement involving other descendants of the Engaines, Mary the wife of Robert Stonham* and her daughter, Elizabeth, who had married the Bedfordshire esquire, John Broughton. CPR, 1436-41, pp. 50, 51. Later, during the 1440s and early 1450s, he attended to matters relating to members of his more immediate family. He was, for instance, a feoffee for his daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, Frederick Tilney of Ashwellthorpe, Norfolk, being one of those to whom the couple entrusted their manor of Little Thetford in the Isle of Ely in 1443. Portland mss, DD/4P/4/21; DD/P/6/1/1/24. Tilney died not long afterwards, and Elizabeth married John Say II*, a household servant of Henry VI, in late 1446. Before the end of that year, Say undertook to provide his new wife with jointure lands worth 50 marks p.a. CPR, 1446-52, p. 23; CCR, 1441-7, p. 441. (By this date, Cheyne had also found a husband for another of his daughters, Katherine, in the person of the Hertfordshire esquire, Henry Barley*. Henry was the son and heir of John Barley*, who had settled lands worth 40 marks p.a. on the couple at some stage before his death in February 1446.) CIPM, xxvi. 398. According to Vis. Cambs. (Harl. Soc. xli), 119, Katherine was the da. of Cheyne’s son, John, but this is unlikely, given that Henry Barley and John Cheyne were almost exact contemporaries in age. In April 1451, Cheyne was party to an agreement for the marriage of Elizabeth Say’s young daughter by Tilney (another Elizabeth) to Humphrey, son of Sir John Bourgchier. Along with Say, who had acquired the girl’s wardship, he undertook to pay Sir John (later Lord Berners) £500, while for his part the knight agreed to settle lands worth £40 p.a. on the couple and their male heirs. Portland mss, DD/4P/48/5. In the meantime, Cheyne’s son and heir, John, had married Elizabeth, a daughter and coheir of the Nottinghamshire knight, Sir Thomas Rempston†. It was in the wake of this marriage that in mid 1449 the MP obtained the King’s licence to settle various manors and lands in Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire on an influential group of feoffees, headed by Sir Thomas Chaworth. CPR, 1446-52, pp. 258-9. The importance of the feoffees reflected the importance of the match, which was significantly to augment John Cheyne’s estates. How it was achieved is not known, although possibly Rempston had come to know the Cheynes through holding land in Huntingdonshire in the right of his wife. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 193.

Among the feoffees of the settlement of 1449 were men for whom in turn Cheyne performed the same role: his son-in-law John Say, CPR, 1446-52, p. 253. Sir Thomas Fynderne*, C131/71/3. and (Sir) Edmund Ingoldisthorpe*. He had a longstanding association with Ingoldisthorpe, one of the best connected of the mid fifteenth-century Cambridgeshire gentry, for he had served both Sir Edmund and that knight’s step-grandmother, Margaret de la Pole, as a feoffee since the mid 1430s. C139/165/20; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 340-1; 1454-61, pp. 156-7. It was perhaps on Ingoldisthorpe’s behalf that Cheyne and others conveyed various lands to a new chantry founded at Borough Green by John Bateman, the rector of Burrough, in 1445. One of Bateman’s purposes in setting up the chantry was to provide prayers for a number of his benefactors. These included Cheyne, to whom Bateman also left the right of presentation should Ingoldisthorpe die without heirs or fail to fill any vacancy within three months. CPR, 1441-6, p. 358; Add. 5826, ff. 10, 11. Later, when he came to make his will of August 1456, Ingoldisthorpe ordered his executors, including Cheyne, to establish another chantry in the church at Burrough Green and four years later the King granted them licence to found it. It was as Ingoldisthorpe’s executor that Cheyne obtained a pardon in 1458. PCC 7 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 53-54); CPR, 1452-61, p. 634; C67/42, m. 31. Less well documented than Cheyne’s association with Ingoldisthorpe are his links with Sir Thomas Sackville*, a Buckinghamshire knight with interests in East Anglia for whom he was likewise a feoffee. CP25(1)/292/68/189. It is nevertheless possible that there was a family connexion: the parentage of Sackville’s wife Anne is uncertain but, according to one authority, she was the daughter of ‘Cheyne’. R. Horrox, De la Poles of Hull (E. Yorks. Local Hist. Ser. xxxviii), 23.

During his later years, Cheyne continued to play a full part in local affairs, in spite of obtaining a second exemption for life from local offices in 1453. CPR, 1452-61, p. 105. He was a member of every commission of the peace for Cambridgeshire from July 1441 until a year before his death and attended several county elections in his later years, including that of his son to the Parliament of 1449-50. In July 1452 he took out a pardon, perhaps as a precaution following political unrest in Cambridgeshire the previous February, although he was to be one of the jurors who, later that year, indicted several local men of plotting the King’s downfall. C67/40, m. 24; KB9/7/1/4. Nearly six years later, William Baron* and others sued him in the court of King’s bench, by means of a bill of 19 Apr. 1458. According to the plaintiffs, Cheyne had illegally maintained one John Brunne in an earlier lawsuit at Westminster, in which they had accused Brunne of unlawfully disseising them of the manor of Great Paxton, Huntingdonshire. Most probably Baron and his associates were acting as the feoffees of Sir John Popham*, who had purchased a manor in that parish in 1433, but it is impossible to ascertain why Cheyne would have opposed Popham’s interests. KB27/788, rots. 26, 26d; VCH Hunts. ii. 328. In March 1459, Cheyne attended the mass celebrated at the formal installation of Bishop Gray of Ely. Reg. Gray, f. 120v. He appears not to have played any part in the administration of the episcopal liberty under Gray, although Bishop Bourgchier had appointed him to a gaol delivery commission at Ely over ten years earlier. Cheyne died on 30 or 31 Dec. 1461 and was buried in the priory church at Barnwell, probably in a long since vanished marble sepulchre. According to his inquisitions post mortem, he did not hold any land of the King, presumably a consequence of settlements he had made during his lifetime. C140/6/50; VCH Cambs. ii. 246.

Worth noting among Cheyne’s personal affairs in his later years are a series of trespass suits as both plaintiff and defendant against Richard Bonyfaunt, also of Fen Ditton, who had pursued a career as a London mercer. CP40/777, rot. 485; 778, rots. 216d, 392, 511d; 781, rots. 184, 381; 782, rot. 347; 783, rot. 143d. The MP was no stranger to the law; throughout his life, he had pursued lesser men for trespass and debt in both the main courts, but one of the suits involving Bonyfaunt is particularly noteworthy. During 1456-7, he sued the mercer and others in the common pleas, accusing them of having conspired to have him charged with sheltering a supposed murderer, John Gates, a ‘fyssher’ from Fen Ditton. Cheyne and Alexander Wood, one of the coroners for Cambridgeshire, were said to have received Gates at ‘Peneston’ in Yorkshire on 9 Apr. 1455, after he had killed a man at Wath in that shire on the previous 30 Mar., by plunging a ‘fyssherdrage’ into his skull. Cheyne’s suit was for damages – on the grounds of Gates’s subsequent acquittal – and he was awarded the very substantial sum of £210 10s., but what he was doing in Yorkshire at the time and the full details of this curious case are not known. CP40/783, rot. 660d; 784, rot. 125; 787, rot. 434; KB27/790, rot. 21d.