CHEYNE, John I

More can be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 547-9.

At the conclusion of Cheyne’s first Parliament, Henry V acknowledged the Commons’ generous grant of taxation by proclaiming a general pardon for all crimes (although with some exceptions) committed before 15 May 1413, the day the assembly opened. Those wishing to benefit were nevertheless required to purchase individual charters of pardon for a standard fee of 16s. 8d. In all likelihood the John Cheyne who took advantage of the offer by acquiring such a pardon was the MP, since he was readily placed to avail of it.2. C. Given-Wilson, ‘Introduction to 1413 (May) Parl.’, PROME, ix. 3; C67/36, m. 14.

It appears that Cheyne ran into financial difficulties earlier and more extensively than previously noticed. By 1415 Thomas Cowley† and the other executors of Alice Frenssh of Oxford were pursuing him over a debt of £40, and in the early 1420s he was indebted in £200 to the London scrivener William Grove and the clerk John Covyngton. At the beginning of 1425 he came before the mayor of the staple of Westminster to acknowledge a debt of £200 to Adam Semy, a shearer from the City, and another of £60 (still outstanding ten years later) to Stephen Forster* and other Londoners.3 C241/209/23; 218/8; 222/34; 228/166. Later that year, a suit that Walter Caketon, a vestment-maker from London, had brought against Cheyne came to pleadings in the court of common pleas. Caketon stated that he had taken a bond for £44 from the MP in 1423, and that the whole of that sum was still outstanding. Cheyne responded by obtaining licence to treat with the plaintiff out of court, having found pledges who included his eldest son, Alexander Cheyne, whom the plea roll refers to as ‘gentleman’ of London.4 CP40/658, rot. 490. The MP was again a defendant in the common pleas later in the same decade, this time in a suit brought by another Londoner, the draper John Higham*. In pleadings of Easter term 1428, Higham alleged that Cheyne owed him £100 arising from a bond of eight years earlier. Again, Cheyne secured licence to negotiate with the plaintiff out of court, with his pledges on this occasion including Alexander and William Cheyne, both of London. The plea roll refers to Alexander as a draper, so it is unclear whether he was the MP’s son of that name or a relative and namesake. As for William, presumably another relative, he was a goldsmith. Assuming the parties did reach an out of court settlement, they did not resolve their differences quickly, for Cheyne was to seek successive licences to interplead with his opponent away from the common pleas, up until Trinity term 1431.5 CP40/669, rot. 421. It seems unlikely that William Cheyne was the MP’s son by his second marriage, since he was very probably still a child at that date. In the meantime, he entered into a recognizance at Northampton in 1429, as a security for a sum he owed John Longville. Furthermore, he reappeared in the staple of Westminster on at least two more occasions in the first half of the 1430s: in June 1432, he acknowledged a debt of £146 13s. 4d. to William Duffield, archdeacon of Colchester as well as chaplain to John Kemp, archbishop of York, and he and his son Alexander acknowledged a debt of £40 to William Preston, a year later.6 C241/228/46, 140; C241/230/107; Biog. Reg. Univ. Oxf. ed. Emden, i. 601-2. Cheyne’s financial difficulties appear all the more striking in the light of his assessment for the subsidy of 1436, for the purposes of which he was calculated to enjoy a landed income of £200 p.a.7 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (i) d.

In the early 1440s Cheyne and his second wife were sued in the common pleas by his kinsman, Sir John Cheyne I*, and others. Ostensibly, the parties were disputing the title to lands at Lenborough near Buckingham, although quite possibly it had a connexion with the by then desperate financial plight of the MP, some of whose estates fell into his namesake’s hands.8 CP40/720, rot. 117; 721, rot. 111.