Henry Chichele

Henry Chichele
Archbishop of Canterbury Primate of All England
Appointed	28 April 1414
Installed	unknown
Term ended	12 April 1443
Predecessor	Thomas Arundel
Successor	John Stafford
Other posts	Bishop of St David's
Orders
Consecration	17 June 1408
Personal details
Born	1363 or 1364
Died	12 April 1443
Denomination	Roman Catholic

Henry Chichele (also Checheley) (c. 1364 – 12 April 1443), was an English archbishop and founder of All Souls College, Oxford.

Chichele was born at Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, in 1363 or 1364; Chicheley told Pope Eugene IV, in 1443, in asking leave to retire from the archbishopric, that he was in his eightieth year. He 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, John 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. This story was unknown to Arthur Duck, Fellow of All Souls, who wrote Chichele's life in 1617.

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.

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