Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/176

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Chaucombe
168
Chauncey

done, but that no novelties would be allowed. He asked for a day's grace, and then made an apology. He was again chosen in 1414. In that year he also received a commission, in which he is called 'domicellus,' to treat about the marriage of Henry V, and to take the homage of the Duke of Burgundy. The next year ne served with the king in France, bringing into the field twelve men-at-arms and thirty-seven archers, and was present at the battle of Agincourt. In 1417 he was employed to treat for peace with France. On the accession of Henry VI he appears to have been superseded in the chief butlership, and to have regained it shortly afterwards. In January 1424 he was appointed a member of the council with a salary of 40l., and the next year was one of the commissioners to decide n dispute between the earl marshal and the Earl of Warwick about precedence. In 1430-1 he was appointed one of the executors of the will of the Duchess of York. He was very wealthy, for in the list drawn up in 1436 (he was then dead) of those from whom the council proposed to borrow money for the war with France, he was put down for 200l., the largest sum asked from any on the list except four. He died on 14 March 1434, and was buried at Ewelme, where his wife, who died in 1436, was also buried with him. He left one child, Alice, who married first Sir John Philip (d. 1415); secondly, Thomas, earl of Salisbury (d. 1428), having no children by either; thirdly, William de la Pole, earl and afterwards duke of Suffolk (beheaded 1450), by whom she had two sons and a daughter.

[Sir Harris Nicolas's Life of Geoffrey Chaucer in vol. i. of the Aldine edition of Chaucer's Works, containing references to and extracts from original authorities, has afforded the main substance of the above notice; Manning's Lives of the Speakers, 44-52; Return of Members of Parliament, i. 261-319 passim; Rolls of Parliament, iii. 609, 648, iv. 35; Stubbs's Constitutional History, iii. 60, 63, 67, 90, 259.]

W. H.


CHAUCOMBE, HUGH de (fl. 1200), justiciar, was probably born at Chalcombe in Northamptonshire; at least, it is certain that it was from that place that he received his surname. He is first mentioned in 1108, in the Great Roll of Henry II, as having paid 30l. for relief of six knights' fees in the diocese of Lincoln, in which Chalcombe was then included. He next appears in the same record as having in 1184 been fined one mark to be released from an oath which he had taken to the abbot of St. Albans. During the last three years of Richard I (1196-8) he was sheriff of Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire. On the accession of John he was employed about the king's person, and accompanied him into Normandy. In September 1200 he witnessed a charter granted by John at Argentan, and sat as one of the judges in the king's court at Caen. In the same year the barons of the exchequer received instructions that a debt which Chaucombe owed to the king should be respited so long as he continued abroad in the royal service. The next mention of Chaucombe belongs to 1203, when he appears as having been charged with the duty of making inquisition at the ports with regard to the persons who imported corn from Normandy. During the next two years he frequently accompanied the king in his journeys through England, and several charters granted at different places are witnessed by him. In 1204 he acted as justice itinerant, fines being acknowledged before him in Hampshire and Nottinghamshire, and in July of that year he sat in the king's court at Wells. In the following October he was again appointed sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, jointly with one of the king^s clerks named Hilary, and was entrusted with the care of the royal castle of Kenilworth. He was also appointed to manage the revenues of Kenilworth Priory during its vacancy. In January 1206-7 he failed to appear to a suit brought against him by R. de Aungervile relating to the wrongful possession of some cattle, and orders were issued for his arrest. In the following July he was dismissed from his office of sheriff, being succeeded by Robert de Roppesley, to whom he was commanded to deliver up the castle of Kenilworth; and subsequently he had to pay a fine of eight hundred marks to the king. In 1209 he became a monk, and entered the priory at Chalcombe. By his wife Hodiema he had one son, named Robert, and two daughters, who were married to Hamund Passalewe and Ralph de Grafton.

[Rot. Cur. Reg. ed. Palgrave, 109, 112,128, 130, 429, 430; Madox's Exchequer, i. 171, 175, 316, 459, 497; Rot. Pat. i. pt. i. 33, 74; Placit. Abbrev. 7, 55 ; Fuller's Worthies, i. 575, ii. 314; Foss's Lives of the Judges, ii. 60; Baker's Hist. of Northamptonshire, 588, 591.]

H. B.


CHAUNCEY, CHARLES, M.D. (1706–1777), physician, was the eldest son of Charles Chauncey, a London citizen, son of Ichabod Chauncey [q. v.] He went to Benet College, Cambridge, in 1727, and graduated M.B. 1734, M.D. 1739. In 1740 he was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians, and became a censor in 1740. He was elected F.R.S. on 29 Jan. 1740, but his chief reputation was as an antiquary. The portraits of Garth and of Mead at the College of Physicians were