CHISELDEN, John

The marriage of our MP’s grandfather to the heiress of the Burgh family elevated the Chiseldens to a prominent place among the gentry of Rutland. Her inheritance included a manor at Allexton with lands at nearby Thorpe Satchville in Leicestershire and at Benefield in Northamptonshire, but her main property was in Rutland. Here she held the manors of Braunston and Leigh, to the latter of which attached the hereditary office of forester of Rutland (alias ‘Leighfield’) forest. In her inquisition post mortem these lands were valued, probably conservatively, at just under £40 p.a.2 CIPM, xxvi. 287-9. In a royal grant of 1400 the keepership of the forest and the manor of Leigh were alone valued at 40 marks p.a. and more: CPR, 1399-1401, p. 337. On the other hand, Anne was assessed at only £31 p.a. in the Leics. tax returns of 1436: E179/192/59. On 23 Mar. 1444, shortly before her death, she settled her estate in lands in Thorpe Satchville – in which her daughter by her first husband, Theobald Ward, had a life interest – on our MP in tail male.3 On the same day she settled the only other lands her daughter held of her inheritance – at Burrough on the Hill and neighbouring Somerby – on her only surviving son, Robert Chiselden, also in tail male: CIPM, xxvi. 289 . At this date he was still a minor, albeit only a little short of his majority. Her death a year later brought his wardship and marriage to the Crown, and, on 10 Mar. 1445, only three days after her death and before the relevant inquisitions could be held, the Crown granted them to a local magnate, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. Perhaps Cromwell’s desire to hold onto his lands for a little longer than the 11 months that remained to his majority explains the delay our MP suffered in securing legal possession. Although he reached his majority on 14 Feb. 1446, the writ for his proof of age was not issued until the following November and it was not until 20 Apr. 1447 that his proof of age was taken at Uppingham. An even more severe delay followed for the writ for livery of seisin of his inheritance was not sent to the relevant escheators until 6 Feb. 1448, nearly two years after he had come of age.4 CIPM, xxvi. 287-9; C139/129/41; E. Acheson, Leics. in 15th Cent. 174-5; CPR, 1441-6, p.367; CCR, 1447-54, p. 5.

This delay in securing his property must have exacerbated the financial difficulties Chiselden appears to have laboured under from very early in his career.5 His mother’s survival might have been a drain on his resources, but, since his father did not live to inherit the Burgh lands and probably did not live to inherit those of the Chiseldens, she had little or no dower. It was perhaps because she had so little that, on 28 Mar. 1448, he granted her four messuages and a water-mill in Allexton: Bodl. Dugdale mss, 39, f. 50. He may have owed to Cromwell his marriage to an heiress, but her inheritance – the small manor of ‘Scarlies’ in Uppingham – was not sufficient to alleviate these difficulties.6 Although his first wife was probably the gdda. and h. of Walter Scarle†, MP for Rutland on seven occasions between 1368 and 1395, she came of a family with little land. Within a week of his livery of seisin he had sold his office of parker of Ridlington, appurtenant to his forestership of Rutland, to Thomas Neel of Owston in Leicestershire, for the latter’s life.7 CCR, 1447-54, p. 43. Earlier, in Trin. term 1447 Neel had an action against him for £100, and it may be that the sale was in discharge of this debt: CP40/746, rot. 168. Two months later, on 19 Apr., before the mayor of the Westminster staple he entered into a £100 bond to Edward Langford*, whose mother had stood godmother at his baptism, for payment at the following Michaelmas. On 11 July he took out a royal licence to alienate his forestership of Rutland, held in chief, and, since Langford was one of the nominated feoffees, it may be that this was a mortgage. If it was, however, it failed to provide him with the funds he needed, for his failure to redeem the bond resulted, on 12 June 1449, in a royal order for his arrest and the seizure of his lands. Probable collusion with the sheriff, Hugh Boyville*, enabled him to delay the implementation of this order, but the respite was brief. On 20 July an inquiry found that, when the bond was made, he was possessed of the manors of Braunston and Leigh together with the forestership of Rutland, and these were taken into the hands of the sheriff to discharge the debt.8 CCR, 1447-54, pp. 265-6; C131/67/1, 6; CPR, 1446-52, p. 147.

Chiselden was soon to find himself in even greater trouble. According to petitions submitted in Chancery and, in the spring of 1450, in Parliament, he, with his brother, William, and other lesser men, had, on 7 Oct. 1449, come to the town of Belton in warlike array to assault a yeoman, John Astelby, deputy to Everard Digby* in the office of keeper of Ridlington park.9 C1/19/473; SC8/105/5244. Finding their intented victim at dinner at the house of one William Dunmowe, they lured him into the open by faithfully promising that they meant him no harm. They then proceeded to beat him and leave him for dead. While the exact motive for this assault is uncertain, there can be little doubt that it arose out of a dispute between Digby and Chiselden over the parkership of Ridlington. Digby’s parliamentary petition begins with the assertion that Thomas Neel, Chiselden’s life grantee in the office, had alienated that interest to him. It continues by accusing our MP of orchestrating a prolonged campaign of violence and intimidation against himself and Astelby. Hearing that the latter had recovered his health, on 24 Oct. Chiselden and his servants broke into the park lodge and took away weapons, including two guns, belonging to Digby and Astelby. Far more seriously, on 2 Mar. 1450, while Digby was attending Parliament at Westminster, Chiselden, with a gang of 35 miscreants, came to Dry Stoke, where they shot arrows at Digby’s wife, Agnes, and his ploughmen in the fields, and severely beat one of his servants. Their aim was to abduct Alice, widow of Thomas Bermycher and presumably another of Digby’s servants, to prevent her suing an appeal against those who had murdered her husband.10 In this they were unsuccessful, for she sued her appeal in Hil. term 1451, although it was quickly abandoned: KB27/759, rot. 38. Her husband had been murdered at Sir Henry Pleasington’s*manor at Whissendine by a gang from nearby Wymondham. Our MP was not among the appellees, but as important a man as Sir Laurence Berkeley* was indicted and appealed as an accessory: KB27/766, rex rot. 5d. This suggests that the dispute between Chiselden and Digby was part of wider disturbances in the county, as does the fact that Berkeley later sued Digby for maintaining Alice’s appeal: CP40/771, rot. 322. At the end of April 1450, while Digby was again absent at Parliament, although this time at nearby Leicester, they sought Astelby at Belton and Ridlington with the intention of killing him. Digby concluded his petition with a request for summary action against Chiselden. Astelby had already, through the agency of Lord Cromwell, secured a warrant of the peace instructing the sheriff to arrest him, but he had frustrated its implementation by hiding ‘in places desolate’. To overcome this difficulty, Digby asked for a writ instructing the sheriff to make proclamation at Uppingham and Oakham for the appearance of Chiselden and his confederates in the court of King’s bench at the quindene of Trinity 1450 on pain of summary conviction. Unfortunately for Chiselden the Crown was willing to sanction this process, and he, on his failure to appear, was condemned to pay the plaintiff £260 in damages.11 KB27/771, rot. 30d.

In view of this petition and the preceding events, it is surprising that Chiselden should have headed the list of six attestors to his rival’s election to Parliament at Uppingham on 30 Oct. 1449.12 C219/15/7. This example suggests that nomination as an attestor does not necessarily imply approval of the choice of MP. It is fair to assume in this case that Chiselden attended the election in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Digby’s return, and was named as an attestor by the sheriff simply because he was one of the most senior gentry present. The dispute between the two men is referred to in the unlikely source of the records of Lincoln’s Inn. Chiselden was admitted to the Inn soon after the parliamentary petition against him, but almost immediately was exempted from attendance for three vacations for a reduced fine of 20s. because ‘male vexatus fuit per Dykby’.13 L. Inn Adm. i. 11; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 21. Even before his admission to Lincoln’s Inn our MP had spent time in London. The deed by which he made a grant to his mother in Mar. 1448 was dated there, and, on 10 Aug. 1449, he was allegedly involved on an assault on one Thomas Trefedo in the parish of St. Dunstan in the West: Dugdale mss, 39, f. 50; CP40/757, rot. 124d. Clearly he needed time to overcome his mounting legal and continuing financial difficulties.

At about this time these difficulties forced Chiselden into the sale of part of his inheritance. On 2 Mar. 1451 his feoffees quitclaimed certain lands in Allexton to Henry Sotehill, thus completing a sale agreed at an unknown earlier date. On 22 Feb. 1453, he secured election to represent Rutland in Parliament, and this is probably to be seen as a further measure to solve his problems.14 CCR, 1447-54, pp.265-6; C219/16/2. Parliamentary privilege protected him from arrest as legal process continued against him. His failure to pay Digby the damages in which he had been condemned led to the proclamation of his outlawry in the Rutland county court on 7 June 1453. It may have been in anticipation of this condemnation that, while sitting as an MP, he quitclaimed to William, Lord Bardolf, and two leading retainers of the Beaumonts, Robert Staunton* and John Truthall*, the manor of Leigh and the keepership of the forest of Rutland. Worse was soon to follow for, on 17 Jan. 1454, during the parliamentary recess, he was outlawed for a second time, this time at suit of the King for the offences against Digby of which he had been summarily convicted. Six days later the sheriff of Rutland was ordered to arrest him to stand to right on the first outlawry promulgated against him. Nevertheless, despite being an outlaw twice over, he succeeded in collecting his parliamentary wages of £16 10s. at the county court held at Oakham on the following 3 May, and subsequently refused to surrender them. Belatedly, on 30 Oct., Thomas Willoughby, the county escheator, held an inquisition, on his own authority rather than in response to a royal writ, which found that Chiselden should answer to the Crown for the wages he had improperly collected.15 CCR, 1447-54, p. 441; KB29/91; KB27/771, rot. 30d; Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 376; E136/150/8. Even so, our MP’s adventures in the early 1450s suggest that a member of the gentry might be little inconvenienced by the promulgation of outlawry against him, particularly if he was a parliamentary knight of the shire when outlawed.

From the late 1450s Chiselden’s career was less eventful. He must have succeeded in securing the reversal of his two outlawries, probably at the expense of paying Digby his damages, and, in April 1458, he sued out a general pardon as ‘late of Uppingham, esquire’.16 C67/42, m.23. He is to be distinguished from his older namesake of Belton (Rutland), who, early in his career our MP had sued for detinue of charters: CP40/740, rot. 378. It was the Belton Chiselden who, in Feb. 1449, acted as an attorney for Richard, duke of York, in delivering seisin of the manor of Hambleton (Rutland) to the feoffees of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and who, in Nov. 1457, was pardoned for the outlawry he had incurred at the suit of our MP’s adversary, Digby: KB27/752, rot. 32d; CPR, 1452-61, p. 376. In Trinity term 1459 he suffered a recovery of the keepership of the forest of Rutland to John, Viscount Beaumont, so completing a process that had begun with a grant made during the Parliament of 1453. On 25 Oct. 1459 he appeared third on the list of attestors to the Parliament of his old enemy Digby and the lawyer, Ralph Beaufo*, but, if his attestation of the return to this Lancastrian Parliament is an indication of Lancastrain sympathies, there is nothing to suggest he took a part in the civil war of 1459-61.17 CP40/794, rot. 126d; C219/16/5.

Beaumont’s attainder and forfeiture meant that the manor of Leigh and the Rutland forestership came into the hands of the new King, who granted it to William, Lord Hastings. Both Chiselden and his brother, William, were called upon to quitclaim their rights on 19 May and 22 June 1463 respectively. Hastings appears to have been prepared to pay for these quitclaims: on the previous 28 Jan. our MP acknowledged the receipt of £10 from him, perhaps in part payment of a larger sum.18 CPR, 1461-7, pp.103-4; CCR, 1461-8, pp.178, 190; HMC Hastings, i. 103. Later, John divested himself of yet more of his property. On 7 Sept. 1466, by a deed witnessed by John Boyville* and Thomas Flore*, he granted land in Braunston to his uncle, Robert Chiselden, and others. This grant was preparatory to the settlement of this property on his son and heir, another John, and the younger John’s wife Elizabeth, who may have belonged to the Nowers family of Buckinghamshire.19 Vis. Rutland (Harl. Soc. iii), 22; J. Wright, Rutland, 24. Chiselden’s lack of lands did not, however, deter the electors of Rutland from returning him to Parliament for a second time on 30 Apr. 1467.20 C219/17/1 (this return is now almost illegible but OR, i. 358 names Chiselden). In November 1468, a few months after the conclusion of this assembly, he sued out another general pardon.21 C67/46, m. 21. Curiously one of the aliases in this pardon styled him as ‘once of Chepstow’. If this is evidence of a connexion with the lords of Chepstow, the Mowbrays, that connexion has left no other trace on the records. Later references to him are sparse and episodic. A further echo of his financial problems is provided by the bond in 100 marks he entered into with his son, John, and brother, William, to a Leicester merchant shortly before the Readeption. On 15 Jan. 1471 he sat as a juror at Braunston in the inquisition post mortem for Elizabeth, widow of Sir Henry Pleasington; and in 1472, with other members of his family, he was defending an action of trespass sued in the court of King’s bench by William Browe, heir-male of John Browe*, who had sat with him in the Parliament of 1467.22 Vis. Rutland, 22; C140/33/43; KB27/844, rot. 66d. Later he was named second in the list of attestors to the return to Parliament for Rutland of his old enemy’s restored son, another Everard Digby†. Towards the end of his life the execution of Hastings may have temporarily brought the manor of Leigh and its appurtenant forestership back into his hands, but, on 3 Sept. 1483, he granted them to Henry, duke of Buckingham, Edward, earl of Wiltshire, and others.23 C219/17/3; Vis. Rutland, 22. He died shortly before 15 Dec. 1485 when a writ of diem clausit extrenum was issued for his lands in Northamptonshire. After his death a dispute arose between his widow, Joan, and her stepson, John, over an annuity due from the manor of Allexton, but this was quickly settled by Thomas Kebell and others formerly of the council of William, Lord Hastings.24 CFR, xxii. no. 5; E.W. Ives, Common Lawyers: Thomas Kebell, 127.

It is worth noting that Chiselden, despite his long career, never held any of the major offices of county administration, an exclusion which is no doubt to be explained in terms of both his apparent financial difficulties and his involvement, as a young man, in a major dispute. His son and heir, John, seems to have enjoyed a more successful career in that he served a term as sheriff, but he too had significant legal difficulties for he died an outlaw.25 CFR, xxii. no. 668; CCR, 1500-9, no.955 (xiv).