Ralph Cheyne

Sir Ralph Cheyne (c. 1337 – 1400) (alias Cheney), of Brooke, in the parish of Westbury in Wiltshire, was three times a Member of Parliament for Wiltshire and was Deputy Justiciar of Ireland in 1373 and Lord Chancellor of Ireland 1383-4. He was Deputy Warden of the Cinque Ports.

He was the second son and eventual heir of Sir William Cheyne (died 1345) lord of the manor of Poyntington in Somerset by his second wife Joan Gorges, a daughter of Ralph Gorges of Bradpole in Dorset. His elder half-brother was Sir Edmund Cheyne (died 1374/83), Warden of the Channel Islands, who married a certain Katherine (died 1422) but died without children and whose estates Ralph eventually inherited. Katherine remarried to Sir John Strecch (died 1391) of Wambrook in Somerset. Her ledger stone, with a much worn black-letter Gothic inscription describing her as "Lady of Poyntington" ("Kath[er]ina St[re]cchi d[omi]na de Pountyngton") survives in Poyntington Church, reset in the south-west wall. It was in 1401 that her penultimate husband's half-nephew Sir William Cheney (died 1420) married the heiress of Stretch of Pinho.

Wilhelmina, Duchess of Cleveland (1819–1901) in her 1889 work The Battle Abbey Roll with some Account of the Norman Lineages made some attempt at identifying the ancient origin of this family, called Chaunduit in the lists of Leland. Concerning the armorials of Cheney of Brook, according to the Survey of Cornwall by Richard Carew (died 1620):

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