CHEYNE, John I (by 1514-85), of Chesham Bois and Drayton Beauchamp, Bucks.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1514, 1st s. of Robert Cheyne of Chesham Bois by 1st w. Elizabeth, da. of John Webbe of Herts. educ. ?I. Temple. m. (1) settlement 23 Oct. 1541, Winifred (d. 8 July 1562), da. of John, 1st Baron Mordaunt, of Turvey, Beds., 3s.4da.; (2) settlement 1569, Joyce, da. of Sir Anthony Lee of Quarrendon, Bucks., 1s. 2da. suc. fa. 9 Dec. 1552.1

Offices Held

J.p. Bucks. 1554-d.; sheriff, Beds. and Bucks. 1566-7.2

Biography

John Cheyne came of a long-established Buckinghamshire family. His early career is difficult to distinguish from that of a kinsman and namesake of Shardeloes in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and it is not known which of them, if either, was a member of the Inner Temple in 1537, a servant of Cromwell in the following year or a sewer of the chamber in 1547. That it was Cheyne of Chesham Bois who sat for Chipping Wycombe in the Parliaments of March 1553 and November 1554 is, however, clear from the patronage at work, that of his uncle Sir Edmund Peckham, perhaps augmented, especially in the autumn of 1554, by the Mordaunts: in March 1553 Cheyne’s partner was his cousin Henry Peckham. Nothing is known of his role in either Parliament save for the negative evidence that, unlike another namesake sitting for Winchelsea, he was not among those Members who left the second of them without licence.3

Cheyne seems to have shared the religious sympathies of his uncle Peckham and his brother-in-law Sir John Mordaunt. He remained on the Buckinghamshire bench after the accession of Elizabeth, but in 1564 he was described as a hinderer of religion and he named as overseer of his will of 25 June 1585 the Catholic lawyer Thomas Farmer alias Draper, himself an Elizabethan Member for Chipping Wycombe. Cheyne died on 14 Nov. 1585.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. K. Dale

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from age at fa.’s i.p.m., E150/47/1. Harl. 1533, f. 8v; PCC 5 Tashe, 16 Windsor; Add. Ch. 55573; Lipscomb, Bucks. iii. 272; Vis. Beds. (Harl. Soc. xix), 42; Vis. Bucks. (Harl. Soc. lviii), 27, 1153; C142/210/60.
  • 2. CPR, 1553-4, P. 17; 1560-3, p. 434.
  • 3. VCH Bucks. iii. 149, 219; Lipscomb, iii. 152-3; Cal. I.T. Recs. i. 61; M. L. Robertson, ‘Cromwell’s servants’ (Univ. California Los Angeles Ph.D. thesis, 1975), 462-3; LC2/2, ff. 63v, 75.
  • 4. Cam. Misc. ix(3), 31; PCC 16 Windsor; C142/210/60.