CHALCOTE, Richard I

Were it not that the Richard Chalcote who sat for Wareham in 1455 was described on the parliamentary indenture as ‘junior’, it would be readily assumed that the same Richard Chalcote represented Wareham in both 1442 and 1455; but that description needs to be taken into account and complicates what would otherwise have been a relatively straightforward narrative. Distinguishing between the two men is by no means easy, and their relationship to each other has not been discovered. Yet of the Chalcote family’s background there is little doubt. Hutchins showed that the Chalcotes were seated for ‘many ages’ in the Isle of Purbeck, where the name occurs among the principal inhabitants of the district from the thirteenth century.2 J. Hutchins, Dorset, i. 590. By the time of the death of William Chalcote in 1483 the family holdings in Dorset were focused on East Kimmeridge (where there was a house called ‘Chalcotes’), Putton and East Chickerell, and also included the manor of Hungerhill along with some 200 acres of land nearby; while in Somerset William held the manor of ‘Aysshebrutell’.3 C141/1/4. Although we cannot be certain that either of the two Richard Chalcotes held these particular properties before their younger kinsman did so, the proximity of the Dorset lands to Wareham and the feudal tenure of the Somerset manor from the widow of Wareham’s lord, the duke of York, are factors of significance.

When first mentioned in the records, in 1433, Richard Chalcote, called ‘of Lytchett Matravers, gentleman’, stood accused of a trespass at Sturminster Marshall.4 CP40/689, rot. 59. These places are situated not far from Wareham, where Chalcote and his wife Joan held property; five years later they brought an action against a local draper for breaking into their house in the town and taking goods worth £10.5 CP40/708, rot. 266d. The MP was perhaps the son of William Chalcote, who had been named as a tax collector in Dorset in 1416. While he himself does not appear to have ever been appointed to a royal commission, he did serve on the jury assembled at Wimborne Minster in November 1431 to provide information for the assessment of the tax on incomes from land,6 Feudal Aids, ii. 117. and in later years he was called upon to be a juror at inquisitions post mortem conducted in Dorset following the deaths of prominent landowners, doing so in 1434, 1435 and 1449 (with respect to Thomas Erdington† and his widow, John, earl of Arundel, and Walter Hungerford†, Lord Hungerford).7 C139/63/23, 69/23, 71/37, 135/30.

Meanwhile, in July 1441 Chalcote had been party to the conveyance of the manor and advowson of Long Critchell, situated in the east of the county, to feoffees headed by Bishop Stafford of Bath and Wells.8 CCR, 1435-41, p. 483. Henry Selwood*, one of those to whom this conveyance was made, was to sit with him in the Commons of the Parliament which met early the following year, albeit representing a different Dorset borough. Chalcote witnessed a deed relating to land in Bridport, in the west of the county, in 1443.9 CAD, vi. C5072. Nine years later he was associated with John Newburgh II*, the prominent Dorset lawyer from whom William Chalcote was to hold his estates in Dorset, as co-feoffee of a messuage in Shaftesbury.10 Dorset Feet of Fines (Dorset Recs. x), 374. Presumably it was he who attested the shire election in 1455, as Richard Chalcote ‘junior’ was returned on that occasion for Wareham.11 C219/16/3. If, as seems likely, it was the younger man who died two years later, in 1457, then the older man was probably he who was listed as a potential juror at sessions of oyer and terminer held at Dorchester in May 1462.12 KB9/21/18.