CHEVERELL, Walter

Walter was the son and heir of a well-regarded Dorset lawyer who had represented Wareham and Dorchester in Henry IV’s reign, and of one of the coheiresses of the family of Chantmarle. His parents’ marriage brought to the Cheverells the manor of East Stoke in the Frome valley in the east of the county, which they shared with Walter’s aunt Christine, the wife of another lawyer, John Jordan* (d.1427) of Wolfeton. His mother’s share of her family estates also included the manors of Chantmarle (up-river in west Dorset) and Hevedon, and under the terms of an entail of 1412 she and her sister had a remainder interest in the manor of ‘Byeastwall’ and Stoborough.5 Hutchins, i. 414. In 1479, on the death of the heir under the entail, Walter’s kinsman John Mone* (who had married his cousin Joan Jordan), Mone was said to have held ‘Byeastwall’ and land in Stoborough as Walter’s tenant: E149/240/10. Walter was to be patron of the church at East Stoke from 1453 until his death,6 Hutchins, i. 423. In the 1470s he sued two carpenters under the Statute of Labourers for leaving his service at Stoke before the end of their contract: CP40/844, rot. 162d. and the rest of his inheritance from his mother, taken together with that from his father (the manor of Upper Sturthill and land elsewhere in west Dorset), provided him with a moderately large, if now unquantifiable, income, placing him among the middling gentry of the county.7 C140/85/45. His holdings were valued at some £46 p.a. at his death.

When Walter was a boy it may have been intended that he should enter the Church. He was sent to Winchester, initially as a commoner in 1430, but as a scholar from 3 Mar. 1431, and he left for Oxford two years later. Yet there is no record of his admission to New College, and his career took a different course from that of a clergyman.8 Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. i. 409. This is made clear from his marriage at some point before April 1440 to one of the daughters of Henry Russell, the most prominent merchant of Weymouth, who had established himself among the gentry. At that date Russell settled on the couple and his daughter’s issue the Dorchester house he himself had inherited from his parents, and later on Walter and his wife were also given other Russell holdings consisting of four tenements and some 300 acres of land in Shaftesbury and Stour Provost in the north of the county, and at Swyre and Rushton on the coast.9 Recs. Dorchester, 299-300; Scott Thomson, 37, 93, 315; C140/85/45. By the late 16th century the property which Henry Russell had settled on Walter and his wife was said to consist of six messuages and 440 acres of land in Shaftesbury, Stour Provost and Dorchester: C142/160/8. It was no doubt through the recommendation of his father-in-law that Cheverell came to be elected to the Parliament of 1442 for the borough of Weymouth, and he accompanied the experienced Russell to the Commons. Quite likely, he had only recently entered into his inheritance (his father is not recorded alive after the previous August),10 CPR, 1436-41, p. 500. and in any case was still a young man, dependent upon Russell’s guidance. In May 1442, shortly after the Parliament ended, his wife Christine was named in entails made by her maternal grandfather, the Dorset esquire John Herring, making provision that she would inherit various of his properties should her siblings John Russell III*, William and Joan, all die without issue. She was also to be named in further settlements of the Herring estates made seven years later.11 C139/162/21; Scott Thomson, 318-19.

Herring was a feudal tenant of property held by Sir James Butler (heir to the earldom of Ormond), in right of his wife the heiress Avice Stafford, and it may have been through him that Cheverell first came to Butler’s attention. Yet the link might have been forged much earlier, for Cheverell’s father had been a feoffee of the former Bryan estates which Avice inherited from her grandmother Elizabeth, wife of Robert Lovell*, and indeed he had been an executor of Elizabeth’s will.12 Suff. RO (Bury St. Edmunds), Hengrave mss, 449/2/641-4; PCC 22 Luffenham (PROB11/3, ff. 170v-171). Whatever the explanation, our MP joined Butler’s circle, and when Sir James came to blows with his wife’s uncle William Stafford* over the Stafford family estates she had inherited, Cheverell rallied to his support. The quarrel became openly violent in August 1444, when followers of Stafford and Butler clashed at Toller Porcorum. Cheverell and his father-in-law were among the 50 or so of Butler’s men subsequently accused of abetting William Browning I* in the homicide of Robert Fayrechild on the 22nd at the start of the clashes, and Stafford later claimed to have been personally assaulted by members of the gang, although the sheriff, Robert Cappes, proved partisan in their favour. The parties were eventually brought before the King’s bench, only to produce pardons dated 11 May 1446.13 CP40/738, rots. 121, 123, 339d; E13/144, rots. 2, 11, 19, 20; KB27/738, rots. 25-26. It is also worthy of remark that when in March 1449 royal licence was allowed to the King’s esquire Nicholas St. Loe to grant a group of men the keeping of Gillingham forest in Dorset, Cheverell was among those named along with Browning and Henry Filongley*; they were acting on behalf of Butler, who was shortly to be created earl of Wiltshire.14 CPR, 1446-52, p. 242.

Yet even if Cheverell was attached in this way to Butler in the 1440s, there is nothing in the records to show that he was drawn into the feud which escalated between the new earl and Sir Edward Brooke*, Lord Cobham, causing serious outbreaks of violence in the west of the county in 1451. Furthermore, the participation of the earl of Devon led to a dramatic show of armed force in Somerset and to the protagonists’ wider involvement in confrontations on the national stage. In the 1450s we hear only of a lawsuit brought by Cheverell against a Dorchester gentleman for breaking his closes and stealing his crops.15 CP40/768, rot. 77. Following the Yorkist victory at St. Albans in 1455, Cheverell attended the shire elections at Dorchester, and endorsed the return to Parliament of his former associate William Browning, the surveyor and receiver of the duke of York’s estates in the region. Perhaps he had followed Browning’s lead in disassociating himself from Butler, who although formerly the duke’s councillor was now becoming estranged from him. Given Cheverell’s status among the gentry and his earlier Membership of Parliament it is curious that he received no appointments to ad hoc commissions or royal office during Henry VI’s first reign. Indeed, little is recorded of him in the late 1450s, save for his engagement in further suits for trespass on his lands,16 KB27/788, rot. 6. and his nomination by Walter Wothe* as a feoffee of the manor of Westport to facilitate a marriage settlement.17 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 255.

Private affairs preoccupied Cheverell in the following decade.He arranged for his son and heir-apparent, John, to marry a daughter of John Wyke II* of Bindon, Devon, a lawyer who was well known in Dorset as a customs official; land in Puddletown was settled on the couple in 1463.18 Som. Archs., Helyar mss, DD\WHh/332. That same year or the next his father-in-law died, and he and his wife took possession of the Russell lands in Stour Provost which had been promised them,19 Scott Thomson, 93. and in May 1467 Cheverell completed settlements of his manors of East Stoke and Chantmarle, providing his wife with jointure, while at the same time the manor of ‘Leford’ was entailed on his son John and the latter’s wife and their issue.20 Ibid. 99-100; C140/85/45.

There can be little doubt where Cheverell stood politically in 1470, for it is clear from his appointment to an important commission of inquiry in October that year that he was considered trustworthy by the earl of Warwick and duke of Clarence after they seized power and Edward IV had fled overseas. However, the path which led him to support Warwick and Clarence is not clearly charted. There may have been a territorial link, for Clarence had been granted the forfeited estates of the earl of Wiltshire in Dorset; perhaps the duke was now Cheverell’s feudal lord. Cheverell’s first royal commission (nearly 30 years after he had sat in Parliament), was followed two months later by his appointment to the Dorset bench as a member of the quorum, although he was to be removed after Edward IV regained his throne. Clarence was reconciled with his royal brother, and in due course our MP purchased a pardon, in January 1472.21 C67/48, m. 20. The following year he received further appointments to commissions, and thereafter until his death he served as a j.p. (albeit no longer as one of the quorum). Yet he was becoming old, and the greater burdens of office needed to be handed to the next generation: his son John was made sheriff of Somerset and Dorset in 1471, and having formally entered the King’s service in 1478 was granted for life the stewardship of the lordship of Rampisham.22 CPR, 1476-85, p. 69. Rampisham had been held by the earl of Wiltshire in right of his wife, and following the forfeiture of his estates had been granted to Clarence.

Cheverell died on 4 Nov. 1481, leaving John, by then aged over 40, as his heir.23 CFR, xxi. no. 616; C140/85/45. It appears that the latter was implicated in Buckingham’s rebellion in the autumn of 1483, but he successfully sued out a general pardon from Richard III in the following February.24 CPR, 1476-85, p. 430. Where he stood when Henry Tudor invaded England in the summer of 1485 does not transpire; in any case he did not survive long after the battle of Bosworth, for he died on 12 Oct. that year. He was succeeded by his son Roger, still a minor.25 CFR, xxii. no. 3; CIPM Hen. VII, i. 144-5. John’s widow Margery successively married Sir John Trenchard (d.1495) and (Sir) William Hody† (d.1524): CIPM Hen. VII, i. 1114; ii. 959 (where Roger Cheverell, our MP’s gds., is wrongly stated to be his son). John had never entered his full inheritance, as his mother Christine lived on for several years more, eventually dying in 1499, some 60 years after she had married our MP.26 CFR, xxii. no. 646; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 316. A later inq. erroneously held that she died on 31 July 17 Hen. VII (1502): CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 960.