CHIPPENHAM, Henry

More can be added to the earlier biography.1 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 568.

Chippenham was one of the wealthiest of the Hereford burgesses. In the subsidy returns of 1451 he was assessed on an annual income of £10, one of only two townsmen to be assessed at so large a sum.2 E179/117/64. His high standing is reflected in his connexions outside the borough. In 1416 he employed Robert Greyndour*, one of the leading Gloucestershire gentry, among the trustees of his extensive holdings in Hereford; and, in 1444, he included two Shropshire gentry, Richard Horde* and Richard’s son, Thomas*, among a new group of feoffees.3 Hereford Cathedral Archs., 709; C139/161/4.

Such connexions explain the good marriage made for his daughter, Katherine. She married a Gloucestershire esquire, Robert (c.1410-1458), son of Nicholas Mattesdon (d.1435) of Kingsholm by Gloucester and Stoke Orchard.4 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 753; CIPM, xxiv. 460. This match was an excellent one for the daughter of a Hereford citizen and emphasises our MP’s wealth. Through his mother, the groom was great-nephew and coheir of Sir John Chandos† (d.1428), once resident at Peterchurch only a few miles from Hereford, and grandson and coheir of Thomas Berkeley† (d.1405) of Coberley (Gloucestershire). Although Mattesdon was not quite as rich as such kinship might be taken to imply – Chandos had alienated most of his lands from his heirs – his admittedly very modest patrimony was supplemented by a Berkeley inheritance worth as much as £50 p.a.5 CP, iii. 150; CIPM, xxiii. 253; CCR, 1429-35, p. 1; C139/168/23; CFR, xix. 224-5, 226. For the Berkeley inheritance and its division: CIPM, xviii. 1020-2; xix. 42-45; xx. 148-50. The date of the marriage is unknown, but it may have taken place in the 1440s. Among the feoffees who entailed the Chandos moiety of the manor of Lugwardine (Herefordshire) on the couple were two of our MP’s feoffees of 1444. Katherine later married another Hereford MP, Otto Cornwall*, although not until after her father’s death.6 CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 753.

Late in his life Chippenham divested himself of a small part of his property. In February 1441 he entered into an agreement that if his wife, Isabel, survived him, she would not claim dower in the two Hereford tenements he had sold to John Colyer and others.7 Add. Ch. 1328. According to his inquisition post mortem he died on 4 Sept. 1451, and yet, when royal justices visited the county in the following August he was attached, as a former mayor of Hereford, to appear before them to reply to another burgess of Hereford, Richard Falk*, on a plea of trespass and deception. Since the inquisition was not held until 4 Oct. 1456, it is possible that he died only a month earlier. If so, however, it is surprising that, as one who routinely attested the city’s parliamentary elections, he was not named as an attestor in 1453.8 KB9/34/2, m. 101; C219/16/2.

Chippenham’s son and heir, Thomas, played contradictory parts in the city’s affairs in the 1450s. Described in indictments as ‘gentleman’, he took livery from the duke of York’s steward, (Sir) Walter Devereux I*, on 4 Jan. 1452, and, a month later, participated in an illicit gathering in the city to support the duke’s failed rising.9 KB9/34/1/5. Later, styled a ‘mercer’, he was on the Hereford jury which, in April 1457, indicted Sir William Herbert*, (Sir) Walter Devereux II* and other Yorkists for the hanging of six citizens on 15 Mar. 1456. As he was among those sued by the indicted for conspiracy to produce false accusations, it is clear that, perhaps alienated from the Yorkists by their violent intervention in the city’s politics, his sympathies now lay with the Lancastrian faction in the county.10 KB9/35/72d; KB27/806, rot. 5d.