CHYVALL, John

An old but undistinguished family, the Chyvalls had possessed lands at Bow Brickhill in Buckinghamshire during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries,2 VCH Bucks. iv. 290. but their interests in Hertfordshire played a far more significant part in their history. Since the beginning of the fourteenth century or earlier, they had held the manor of ‘Sisservernes’ in Codicote as feudal tenants of the abbots of St. Albans. Chyvall’s great-grandfather and grandfather were esquires of both the abbots and Edward III, and they were to receive the honour of burial in the abbey church at St. Albans. His grandfather, another John Chyvall, was of particular service at the time of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, helping to apprehend some of those who had risen at St. Albans against the abbot.3 Feudal Aids, ii. 427; Chauncy, ii. 408; VCH Herts. ii. 346; J. Amundesham, Chron. S. Albani ed. Riley, i. 444; Gesta Abbatum S. Albani ed. Riley, iii. 339; T. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, ii. 26. The Chyvalls may have been established at Codicote long before 1300, since it is possible that they and the ‘de Sisservernes’, earlier tenants of the manor, were of the same fam.: Trans. E. Herts. Arch. Soc. v. 46; xii. 85. It is likely that Nicholas Chyvall (d.1429) a ‘vestment maker’ of London, and his son Walter (d.1434) were in some way related to the MP, since their holdings included a couple of manors near Hertford: CIPM, xxv. 545; xxvi. 387. ‘Sisservernes’ was perhaps Chyvall’s only manor, although he also owned lands at Kimpton (just west of Codicote) and a third share of a close at Yardley Gobion, Northamptonshire.4 1 AR, ff. 91v-92; C1/24/151. His estates were certainly modest, for he was assessed at a mere £20 p.a. in lands for the purposes of the subsidy of 1436.5 E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (iii).

As minor landowners, the Chyvalls were never foremost among the Hertfordshire gentry, and it is likely that Chyvall owed his seat in the Commons to his status as an esquire of the King’s household.6 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 179, states that Chyvall was an usher of the chamber by the time of Queen Margaret’s coronation in May 1445, but this is not so: it was as an esq. of the Household that he was issued with robes on that occasion: E361/6, rot. 38d. Given his family’s long association with the abbots of St. Albans, he may previously have entered the Household through the good offices of Abbot John Whethamstede. An influential figure, Whethamstede was close to some of the greatest men of the realm and he hosted the young Henry VI and his mother at St. Albans during the Easter festivities of 1428.7 VCH Herts. iv. 399.

Chyvall had certainly joined the royal establishment by February 1430, when together with another of its esquires, Ralph Babthorpe, he indented to accompany Henry on his coronation expedition to France. Each undertook to bring three mounted archers and to muster at Dover on 1 May, the Crown agreeing in return to pay daily wages of 12d. to each of them and 6d. to each of their archers.8 E101/70/4/67; E404/46/193. In Mar. 1430 Andrew Cauche, presumably one of the archers, received letters of protection as a member of Chyvall’s retinue: DKR, xlviii. 269. Presumably, Chyvall returned to England with the King at the beginning of 1432. At the end of the same decade, he stood as a mainpernor for the King’s henchman and carver, Sir Robert Roos, and he attended the coronation of Margaret of Anjou in May 1445.9 E361/6, rot. 38d. In October 1447, the Crown assigned him £100 from the tunnage and poundage of London for the expenses of the Household, in lieu of an invalid tally for that amount.10 CFR, xvii. 117; CPR, 1446-52, p. 108. The problem of household finance loomed large in his only Parliament,11 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 321. and the following Parliament (1449-50) passed an Act of Resumption, to allow the King to recover some of the lands and fees that he had granted away to his courtiers. Chyvall himself had benefited from Henry VI’s largesse, for in February 1438 he had received a grant for life of £20 p.a. from the issues of the alien priory of Stogursey, Somerset, with reversion to Eton College. Initially he was to have received an exemption from the Act although in the end he lost his annuity, which the King re-granted to the college in January 1451.12 CPR, 1436-41, p. 140; 1446-52, p. 429; VCH Som. ii. 169; E163/8/14.

It is possible that his status as a Household man emboldened Chyvall – not known to have received any grants of land from the Crown – to make a speculative bid for estates in Buckinghamshire some two years after obtaining his Stogursey annuity. By 1440 he had begun lawsuits in the court of common pleas against John Helwey and the widowed Elizabeth Ragon, mother of the recently deceased John Ragon* and sister and coheir of the late Thomas Wydeville*, for committing waste on the manor of ‘South Caldecote’, Buckinghamshire. It is likely that the manor was the Wydeville lordship of Caldecott at Bow Brickhill, a property to which he could have had no valid claim even though his ancestors had once possessed an estate in that parish.13 CP40/718, rot. 40d; VCH Bucks. iv. 290-1.

In spite of his membership of the unpopular Household, Chyvall retained his place on the Hertfordshire bench throughout the political crises of the late 1440s and early to mid 1450s. Although a j.p., he was appointed to only three ad hoc commissions in his native county and was not active as a feoffee there. The only parliamentary election he certainly attested was that to the Parliament of 1447, the assembly called to bring down the court’s opponent, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.

In his will, dated 24 Feb. 1457 and proved on 9 Sept. 1458,14 1 AR, ff. 91v-92. Chyvall asked to be buried in the parish church of St. Giles, Codicote. He directed that a chaplain should sing in St. Giles for himself, his friends and all the faithful departed for three years and left £3 in alms for the souls of Robert and John Chyvall and William Wylly. He made bequests to his six children, leaving £20 to each of his sons, Edmund and William, 20 marks and a silver cup to his third son, John, £40 to his daughter Elizabeth and £10 each to his daughters, Agnes and Ellen. Chyvall provided for his wife, Alice, whom he appointed one of his executors, by awarding her his holdings at Kimpton for life. Alice, who was also executrix of John (d.1472), one of her younger sons by the MP, was still alive in the summer of 1474, when she sued John Nedebury, a gentleman from St. Albans, for trespass in the court of King’s bench.15 Herts. Archs., 2 AR (Reg. Archdeaconry St. Albans, 1471-1536), f. 8v; KB27/852, rot. 3. The MP’s successor was his eldest son Edmund, but a failure in the male line in the sixteenth century meant that the Chyvall estates passed in marriage to John Penne, a groom of the Chamber and barber-surgeon to Henry VIII. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, Penne added to his holdings at Codicote by buying the chief manor there, formerly the property of St. Albans abbey, from the Crown.16 Trans. E. Herts. Arch. Soc. xii. 86; Chauncy, ii. 408; VCH Herts. ii. 346; LP Hen. VIII, xx (2), no. 910 (39).