CHALCOTE, Richard II

Only on the return for Wareham to the Parliament of 1455 has any record been found of a Richard Chalcote ‘junior’. It may, therefore, be incorrect to assume that it was this MP who was active in Hampshire in the 1450s, and not his older namesake, Richard Chalcote I*. The precise relationship between the two men has not been discovered. What seems to be clear is that the Richard who was active as a royal commissioner and office-holder in Hampshire was he who married the widowed Margaret Borde, for that Richard lived in Hampshire, at Winkton near Christchurch. His father’s name was John. The settlement for the marriage was made on 13 Feb. 1453, and on the following 23 June the groom confirmed William Borde and his wife in possession of lands in Wantage and elsewhere in Berkshire, which had presumably been settled on Margaret at the time of her earlier marriage to Borde’s son and heir apparent.6 Add. 30289, ff. 86-87; Hants RO, Jervoise of Herriard mss, 44M69/C/625. The bride came from a Somerset family, and under the terms of a final concord made 12 years earlier, in 1441, she had obtained a remainder interest in the manor and advowson of Fairoak, destined to fall in if her brother William Pavele died without issue. However, three years afterwards the Paveles had given up their interest in the estate to William Westbury, the judge.7 Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 100, 106.

Links with Margaret’s former father-in-law Borde, a Berkshire gentleman once associated with the late Thomas Chaucer* and his kinsman Cardinal Beaufort, appear to have had little effect on Chalcote’s career. However, it was at the time of his marriage in 1453 that he began to be appointed to royal commissions in Hampshire. He was instructed by the Exchequer to look into cases of smuggling along the Channel coast and in particular in the port of Southampton, and in October that year he conducted an inquiry at Portsmouth into allegations of piracy.8 CIMisc. viii. no. 229. In July 1454 Chalcote successfully made a request to the Crown that several Bretons be given safe conducts to trade in England to raise the ransoms for three Englishmen imprisoned in Brittany.9 DKR, xlviii. 401. Appointment as escheator in Hampshire and Wiltshire followed in November that year, and then, in December, he was made collector of customs at Poole. Although he was removed from the latter post in April 1455,10 E356/20, rot. 45. Rewards were given to him and his fellow collectors for service in the period starting 8 Jan. 1455: E403/805, m. 6. he was still in office as escheator when elected for Wareham to the Parliament summoned to assemble on 9 July. This was in the aftermath of the battle of St. Albans, at which the duke of York, lord of the borough of Wareham, had been the victor. Yet while Chalcote’s fellow MP for the borough, Alexander Browning*, may be counted among the duke’s supporters (being a younger son of York’s receiver in the region), there is no firm evidence to link Chalcote himself directly with the duke.11 P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 161n, wrongly dates the licence of July 1454 (DKR, xlviii. 401, a calendar of C76/136, m. 1) to 1455, thus mistakenly linking it to the Parliament. Yet it should be noted that his son William later held the Somerset manor of ‘Aysshebrutell’ in socage from York’s widow, and it is quite possible that he himself had held the same property earlier, as Duke Richard’s feudal tenant. Shortly before his Parliament was dissolved, in March 1456, he was reappointed collector of customs at Poole.

Chalcote died on 26 Sept. 1457, nearly a year after relinquishing office. At the inquisition post mortem held at Romsey in Hampshire two years later the jury claimed that he had held no lands in the county, although reported that his heir was his son William, then aged 14.12 CFR, xix. 212; C139/175/17. By the time William himself died, on 31 Jan. 1483, he had taken possession not only of the Somerset manor held of the dowager duchess of York, but also of the family lands in east Dorset: ‘Chalcotes’ in East Kimmeridge on the Isle of Purbeck, and a messuage and land in Putton and East Chickerell, all held of John Newburgh II*, as well as the manor of Hungerhill and some 200 acres of land nearby. Excluding Hungerhill, these holdings were said to be worth £7 6s. 8d. p.a. His heir was his eight-year-old son, George.13 CFR, xxi. nos. 667, 718, 743; C141/1/4. See also J. Hutchins, Dorset, i. 590-1.