Henry Chichele - Early Career

Early Career

Chichele was the third and youngest son of Thomas Chicheley, who appears in 1368 in still extant town records of Higham Ferrers as a suitor in the mayor's court, and in 1381–1382, and again in 1384–1385, was mayor: in fact, for a dozen years he and Henry Barton, schoolmaster of Higham Ferrers grammar school, and one Richard Brabazon, filled the mayoralty in turns.

Chichele's occupation does not appear but his eldest son, William, is on the earliest extant list (1383) of the Grocers' Company, London. On 9 June 1405 Chichele was admitted, in succession to his father, to a burgage in Higham Ferrers. His mother, Agnes Pincheon, is said to have been of gentle birth. There is therefore no foundation in fact for the account (copied into the Dictionary of National Biography from a local historian, J Cole, Wellingborough, 1838) that Henry Chichele, as a poor ploughboy "eating his scanty meal off his mother's lap", was picked up by William of Wykeham. Certainly this story was unknown to Arthur Duck, Fellow of All Souls, who wrote Chichele's life in 1617. Rather it would appear to be an oft-employed method of illustrating the rise of a successful individual, thus perpetuating their historical importance. Similar instances of this are evident in the recounting of the lives of Dick Whittington, Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Gresham.

The first recorded appearance of Chichele himself is at New College, Oxford, as Checheley, eighth among the undergraduate fellows, in July 1387, in the earliest extant hall-book, which contains weekly lists of those dining in Hall. It is clear from Chichele's position in the list, with eleven fellows and eight scholars, or probationer fellows, below him, that this entry does not mark his first appearance in the college, which had been going on since 1375 at least, and was chartered in 1379. He must have come from Winchester College in one of the earliest batches of scholars from that college, the sole feeder of New College, not from St John Baptist College, Winchester, as guessed by Dr William Hunt in the Dict. Nat. Biog. (and repeated in Charles Grant Robertson's History of All Souls College) to cover the mistaken supposition that St Mary's College was not founded till 1393. St Mary's College was in fact formally founded in 1382, and the school had been going on since 1373 (AF Leach, History of Winchester College), while no such college as St John's College at Winchester ever existed.

Chichele appears in the Hall-books of New College up to the year 1392/93, when he was a B.A. and was absent for ten weeks from about 6 December to 6 March, presumably for the purpose of his ordination as a sub-deacon, which was performed by the bishop of Derry, acting as suffragan to the bishop of London. He was then already beneficed, receiving a royal ratification of his estate as parson of Llanvarchell in the diocese of St Asaph on 20 March 1391/92 (Cat. Pat. Rolls). In the Hall-book, marked 1393/94, but really for 1394/95, Chicheley's name does not appear. He had then left Oxford and gone up to London to practise as an advocate in the principal ecclesiastical court, the Court of Arches. His rise was rapid. Already on 8 February 1395/96 he was, on a commission with several knights and clerks to hear an appeal in a case of John Molton, Esquire v. John Shawe, citizen of London, from Sir John Cheyne kt., sitting for the constable of England in a court of chivalry.

Like other ecclesiastical lawyers and civil servants of the day Chichele was paid with ecclesiastical preferments. On 13 April 1396 he obtained ratification of the parsonage of St Stephen's, Walbrook, presented on 30 March by the abbot of Colchester, no doubt through his brother Robert, who restored the church and increased its endowment. In 1397 he was made archdeacon of Dorset by Richard Mitford, bishop of Salisbury, but litigation was still going on about it in the papal court until 27 June 1399, when the pope extinguished the suit, imposing perpetual silence on Nicholas Bubwith, master of the rolls, his opponent. In the first year of Henry IV Chicheley was parson of Sherston, Wiltshire, and prebendary of Nantgwyly in the college of Abergwilly, Wales; on 23 February 1401/2, now called doctor of laws, he was pardoned for bringing in, and allowed to use, a bull of the pope providing to him the chancellorship of Salisbury Cathedral, and canonries in the nuns' churches of Shaftesbury and Wilton in that diocese; and on 9 January 1402/3 he was archdeacon of Salisbury.