John Cheyne

Who is John Cheyne?

Sir John Cheyne or Cheney was a Member of Parliament and briefly the initial Speaker of the House of Commons of England in the Parliament of October 1399, summoned by the newly acclaimed Henry IV.

In 1372 he married Margaret, daughter of William, Lord Deincourt and the widow of Robert, Lord Tiptoft which brought him wealth and status. He becamee an esquire in the king's household and was knighted in 1378.

He took part in a number of diplomatic missions and became MP for Gloucestershire in 1390, 1393, 1394 and 1399. On the last occasion he was elected Speaker, but stood down on the ostensible grounds of ill-health, but may have been persuaded to do so by the influence of Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, who was appalled by his election and warned the clergy that Cheyne was an inveterate 'enemy' of the contemporary church. The revolution of 1399 made for strange bedfellows. Although Cheyne is never called a 'Lollard' by contemporaries, he was a core member of a connection of knights held to be promoters of, or at least sympathetic to, that emerging sect. His testament did reflect some of that sect's attitudes but embedded in a good deal of orthodoxy.