CHEDDAR, Richard

More can be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 537-8.

Cheddar’s frequent brushes with the law, some major, but others rather more minor, occupied not merely the Westminster law courts, but also the King’s council. Thus, in about 1421 John Aunger, a member of a gentry family from Somerset, petitioned Henry V, complaining of having been expelled by Cheddar from his manor of Angersleigh.4 SC8/338/E1196. Ten years later, Sir Thomas Stawell†, in his capacity as the executor of his brother-in-law, Richard Boyton†, sued Cheddar under a bond for 40 marks which he had sealed in the summer of 1421.5 CP40/683, rot. 545. In Trinity term 1424 Cheddar complained before the justices of common pleas that some of his livestock had unlawfully been impounded by John Young, bailiff of William Wroth*, the royal forester of North Petherton. For once, Cheddar may have had the law on his side, for while Wroth claimed the ground on which the animals had been found as his own by virtue of his descent from the ancient family of Plecy, Cheddar was adamant that his property had been taken in the royal park.6 CP40/654, rot. 319.

In the summer of 1427 the Exchequer took renewed action upon the bonds that Cheddar, his half-brother Sir Thomas Brooke* and their friends Edmund Pyne† and William Newton† had sealed some years earlier as surety for Brooke’s good behaviour. At the time, the bonds had been intended to prevent Brooke from further supporting the lollard activities of Sir John Oldcastle†, but their enforcement in 1427 may have owed more to Brooke’s quarrel with Sir William Bonville*, increasingly one of the most powerful men in the south-west.7 KB27/640, rex rot. 5; E159/203, recorda Trin. rots. 7-7d, 8-8d, brevia Trin. rot. 8d; 204, brevia Mich. rot. 10d; 205, recorda Mich. rots. 7d, 7[B].

It is not known for certain what lay behind Cheddar’s dispute with the powerful William, Lord Harington, around the same time, but it is possible that their quarrel resulted in some way from their respective ties with Brooke and Bonville. In Easter term 1429 the justices of common pleas heard a complaint from Harington’s retainer John Broughton* that Cheddar had attempted to bribe the jurors in an action of trespass against Harington and others (an evident legal fiction designed to have the matter tried in Westmorland, as it was alleged that the attempted bribery had taken place at Appleby, whereas the matter itself was pending at Taunton).8 CP40/673, rot. 392.

The death of Cheddar’s wife, which probably occurred in the autumn of 1427, almost immediately caused a string of supposed kinsmen to come forward and stake their claims to Elizabeth Cantelo’s estates, which remained in Richard’s hands by the courtesy of England. In the first instance it was Agnes Wichampton (represented by her guardian John West*), who claimed that Cheddar had been neglecting the upkeep of the buildings and had dug clay pits in the farmland of the manor of Heddington.9 CP40/667, rot. 131. In the summer of 1428 Agnes (now married to William Watkins of Somerford Mautravers) renewed this claim, and a few years later, in 1433, another purported kinsman of Elizabeth’s, one John Plaunche, brought a similar suit regarding the manor of Dursley.10 Peds. Plea Rolls ed. Wrottesley, 337, 349. While Cheddar successfully denied the descent claimed by Plaunche, causing him to drop his suit, the Watkins’ claims caused rather more problems, and after Cheddar’s death the former Cantelo manors passed to William and Agnes Watkins and their descendants.11 Wilts. Feet of Fines (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xli), no. 456; VCH Wilts. xvii. 165.

Among Cheddar’s most enduring, while also most complex associations, was one with John Rydon† and William Borde*, both at different times parliamentary burgesses for the Somerset borough of Taunton. In the 1420s Rydon had been Cheddar’s accomplice in the alleged killing of John atte Water, and it had been Rydon’s part in the conspiracy to rape the victim’s widow to bring about the confiscation of her lands, in accordance with the manorial custom that any widow guilty of fornication should forfeit her rights to dower.12 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 538; E28/38/26. In late 1430 Cheddar was in dispute with John Swayn and his wife Agnes over a house in Taunton that he had acquired from Rydon,13 CP40/679, rot. 545. while shortly after Cheddar’s death, Borde for his part settled the manor of Knightsley and a number of other properties in Taunton, Bradford and Stoke, that he and Rydon had acquired in 1419, on Cheddar’s bastard son, John.14 CP40/706, cart. rot. 1.