CHIKSOND, John

It is possible that Chiksond was a relative of Nicholas ‘Chekesand’, who obtained seisin of a messuage in St. Ives, Huntingdonshire, in 1415. He is first heard of in June 1426, when the Huntingdon wool merchant, John Colles*, gave up his right to land at St. Ives they had hitherto held jointly.4 CP25(1)/94/34/5; CAD, i. B1556. A John Chiksond was involved as a feoffee in a series of transactions concerning properties in Herts. and Mdx. held by John Durham† and his wife in 1412, but there is no evidence that he was the MP: CCR, 1409-13, pp. 418, 421-3; 1413-19, pp. 93-94. Chiksond had further property dealings at St. Ives, where he conveyed away a messuage in 1428.5 CAD, i. A1198. During the same period, he was involved in at least two lawsuits. In one he sued a husbandman from Grafham for a minor debt; in the other he was a mainpernor for Thomas Charwalton* of Huntingdon, along with two other fellow burgesses, John Bickley* and John Abbotsley*.6 CP40/664, rot. 143; 666, rot. 37.

At the end of the 1420s, Chiksond became one of the bailiffs of Huntingdon, an office in which he was to serve no fewer than six terms, some of them consecutive. Administratively speaking, the following decade was probably the busiest decade of his life. He sat in the Parliaments of 1431 and 1435, the second of which coincided with one of his terms as bailiff and, after leaving the latter assembly, he became coroner of Huntingdon. Undoubtedly one of the leading residents of the town by this stage in his career, he swore the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the country in May 1434.7 CPR, 1429-36, p. 376.

Earlier in the same decade, Chiksond fell out with his erstwhile associate, John Colles. In about 1432 Colles sued him and John Andrew II* for breach of trust, claiming that they had refused to return lands in Hartford near Huntingdon, which he had entrusted to their care before going overseas.8 C1/11/179. In the mid 1430s Chiksond and John Abbotsley received seisin of a messuage and garden in Huntingdon from Roger Hunt*. Chiksond took part in other transactions involving these and other properties in the town over the next five years, including one occasion in 1438 when he and his wife, Alice, acquired a messuage there.9 Add. Chs. 33541, 33544-5, 33570; CP25(1)/94/36/27.

The next evidence of Chiksond is from the later 1440s, when he attested the return of Huntingdon’s burgesses to three consecutive Parliaments. He also took part in the controversial Huntingdonshire county election of 1450, as one of the ‘gentlemen’ who supported the return of Robert Stonham* and John Styuecle*. It is unlikely that he was usually styled as such (in 1462, for example, he was a ‘yeoman’),10 CPR, 1461-7, p. 194. but Stonham and Styuecle no doubt wished to emphasize the extent of gentry support for their side. Yet Chiksond probably came closer than most of his fellow burgesses to gentry status, for the lands he held in Huntingdonshire were assessed at £10 p.a. for tax purposes in 1436.11 E179/240/268. He is not known to have held any further office after his last term as bailiff expired in September 1458, and, four years later, he was exempted for the rest of his life from having to serve the King in any official capacity, on account of his ‘age and infirmity’. Still alive at Michaelmas 1472, when he attested the return of the burgesses for Huntingdon to the Parliament of that year, he was probably dead by December 1477, when Richard Chiksond (perhaps his son) took part in the election for the Parliament that opened early the following year.12 CPR, 1461-7, p. 194.