HANCHECHE, Thomas

A lawyer of unknown background, Hancheche found work at Westminster, where he represented a fellow burgess, John Clayver, in the common pleas in 1441. Later that decade, he sued Richard Knesworth, ‘of London, gentleman’, in the same court, for refusing to return a bond entrusted to him for safe-keeping.2 CP40/722, rot. 144; 738, rot. 440d.

There is no evidence of Hancheche’s activities before he entered Parliament, save that he, along with John Enderby*, Nicholas Caldecote* and others, was one of the trustees to whom John Pykot of Abington by Bassingbourn transferred his goods and chattels in July 1434.3 CPR, 1429-35, p. 307. There is no proof that he was in any way related to John Hancchath, who possessed considerable property in Shudy Camps and elsewhere in Cambs. and was one of the main leaders of the rebels of 1381 in that county: CCR, 1377-81, p. 476; VCH, Cambs. ii. 399; vi. 85, 207. After his time in the Commons from May 1437 he acted as a trustee for William Allington II* and his father for at least 15 years.4 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 121, 436, 439, 470; 1447-54, pp. 424-5. It was perhaps also after sitting in Parliament – although definitely between 1433 and 1443 – that he and Richard Bush* of Cambridge acted as pledges in Chancery for Richard Wright (probably the man who represented the town in the Parliament of November 1449) and his wife, the widow of Thomas Hervey of Ely.5 C1/41/197. See also C1/11/274.

Whatever his interests at Cambridge, Hancheche acquired lands in Buckinghamshire through his marriage. His wife, Margaret, was the kinswoman of William Caldecote, who had become a ward of the Crown following the death of his father Thomas, the son of her great-aunt Alice de Eure, in late 1425. William himself died, still a minor, in September 1439, whereupon Margaret, then aged ‘25 and more’, succeeded to the manor of Caldecote in Newport Pagnell, along with other holdings at Newport Pagnell and Calverton. Hancheche did homage for these estates in the following April.6 CIPM, xxii. 701; xxv. 359-60; CP40/903, rot. 158; CFR, xvii. 163; E159/216, brevia Trin. rot. 25d. Although William’s inquisition post mortem had found that Margaret Hancheche was his heir, the Hancheches’ possession of Caldecote did not rest unchallenged, since they faced a rival claimant in one Alice Loven. While the basis of her claim, probably highly speculative, is unknown, it is worth noting that the ‘de Lovent’ family had once held an estate at Newport Pagnell. She may have caused the Hancheches some trouble. A decade and a half after the MP’s death, the Crown would order an inquisition into Caldecote, at which the jury, apparently contradicting the findings of the inquisition post mortem held for William Caldecote in 1439, stated that Hancheche had ‘intruded’ on to the manor after Alice died in February 1462 and had held it until his own death. Whether this means she was in actual physical possession of Caldecote at the end of her life is impossible to say.7 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 896; VCH Bucks. iv. 52-53.

There is no evidence of Hancheche’s activities after the mid fifteenth century, even though he lived to a ripe old age. He died on 12 Mar. 1491, just a few months before his son and heir, Thomas Hancheche the younger, entered the Parliament of that year as one of the burgesses for Bedford.8 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 896. Whether he outlived Margaret, who was certainly still alive in late 1487, is unknown: CP40/903, rot. 158. The younger Thomas survived until 1509. The manor of Caldecote was in his hands at his death and it remained in the Hancheche family until 1541.9 C142/24/19; VCH Bucks. iv. 53.