LEE, William

The identification of Lee’s wife poses problems. The previous biography speculated that she was a daughter and coheiress of John Rickhill* (d.1432) of Islingham (Kent) and the sister-in-law of Richard Bruyn*.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 580-2. There is circumstantial evidence to support this identification: Lee described Bruyn as his ‘brother’ when he had a remainder interest in his manor of Aston settled on Bruyn in tail male; Lee was involved in several conveyances relating to the Rickhill property; and Lee’s obit is recorded in a book of hours that once belonged to Bruyn’s wife, Joan Rickhill.4 Bodl. Gough MS Liturg. 9. Yet such circumstantial evidence is contradicted by the firm evidence that Joan was her father’s sole heiress. Thus another identity must be sought for our MP’s wife. A clue is provided by a deed of 6 Mar. 1428 when Lee and Maud joined others in conveying property in Langley (Shropshire) to feoffees preparatory to their settlement on the Shropshire lawyer, William Burley I*. The other grantees were the two grand-daughters and coheiresses of Sir Hugh Cheyne† (d.1404) of Cheyney Longville, their husbands, Henry Chadderton and Richard Winnesley*, and their nephew, Humphrey Stafford, the son of their dead sister. It is tempting to conclude from this that Lee’s wife was the fourth coheiress. Against this identification is a suit in the court of common pleas in 1419 which suggests that there were only three.5 CP40/634, rot. 102d.

There are two possible resolutions of this difficulty: either Maud’s interest in the property was that of a widow rather than a coheiress, and that she was thus Sir Hugh’s widow, or else that Maud was the half-sister of the coheiresses and the suit of 1419 refers to their maternal inheritance. The latter solution is to be preferred. There is no evidence that Sir Hugh’s widow remarried or that Lee ever had any interest in her lands (these lay mainly in the south-west, her dower and jointure from her marriages to Sir Ralph Seymour and Sir John Merriott† (d.1391) of Merriott in Somerset). Further, the 1419 suit concerned the inheritance of Sir Hugh’s daughter-in-law, Margaret, daughter of Sir John Devereux of Stoke Lacy, and it is therefore possible that Sir Hugh’s son, Sir John Cheyne, had a daughter or daughters by another wife. A visitation pedigree of 1580, abstracted from family evidences now lost, provides strong support for this conclusion. It describes Lee’s wife as the daughter of Sir John Cheyne (by the coheiress of the manor of Capenhurst in Cheshire) and the widow of William Cholmondley.6 Vis. Cheshire (Harl. Soc. xviii), 63, 134-5; G. Ormerod, Palatine and City of Chester ed. Helsby, ii (2), 569, 632.

This pedigree, which is almost certainly to be relied upon, remedies another omission from the earlier biography. It shows that our MP was the representative of a junior branch of the family of Lee of Lea, near Crewe in Cheshire. The branch failed in the male line on the death of his son, Sir James Lee, whose daughter and heiress, Ellen, married Sir Humphrey Stanley† of Pipe.7 Vis. Cheshire, 134-5.