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Thomas Chaucer (1367?–1434), Speaker of the House of Commons

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Thomas Chaucer (1367?–1434), Speaker of the House of Commons Thomas Chaucer (1367?–1434), speaker of the House of Commons, in all likelihood elder son of Geoffrey Chaucer, by his wife Philippa, daughter of Sir Paon Roet and sister of Katherine Swnyford, mistress and afterwards wife of John, Duke of Lancaster, was born about 1367. Early in life, Thomas Chaucer married Matilda, second daughter and coheiress of Sir John Burghersh, nephew of Henry Burghersh, bishop of Lincoln, treasurer and chancellor of the Kingdom. His marriage brought him large estates, and among them the manor of Ewelme, Oxfordshire. It is evident that his connection with the Duke of Lancaster was profitable to him. He was appointed chief butler to Richard II, and on 20 March 1399 received a pension of twenty marks a year in exchange for certain offices granted him by the duke, paying at the same time five marks for the confirmation of two annuities of £10 charged on the duchy of Lancaster and also granted by the duke. These annuities were confirmed to him by Henry IV, who appointed him constable of Wallingford Castle, and steward of the honours of Wallingford and St. Valery and of the Chiltem Hundreds, with £40 a year as stipend and £10 for a deputy. About the same time he succeeded Geoffrey Chaucer as forester of North Petherton Park, Somersetshire. On 5 Nov. 1402 he received a grant of the chief butlership for life. On 23 Feb. 1411 the queen gave him the manor of Woodstock and other estates during her life, and on 16 March the king assigned them to him after her death. Thomas Chaucer sat for Oxfordshire in various parliaments for thirty years. He was chosen speaker in the parliament that met at Gloucester in 1407, and on 9 Nov. reminded King Henry IV that the accounts of the expenditure of the last subsidy had not been rendered. The chancellor interrupted him, declaring that they were not ready, and that for the future the lords would not promise them. He was chosen again in 1410 and in 1411, when, on making his 'protestation' and claiming the usual permission of free speech, he was answered by the king that he might speak as other speakers had done, but that no novelties would be allowed. He asked for a day's grace, and then made an apology. He was again chosen in 1414. In that year he also received a commission, in which he is called 'domicellus,' to treat about the marriage of Henry V, and to take the homage of the Duke of Burgundy. The next year he served with the king in France, bringing into the field twelve men-at-arms and thirty-seven archers, and when Chaucer went back to England due to illness, his retinue was present at the battle of Agincourt. In 1417 he was employed to treat for peace with France. On the accession of Henry VI he appears to have been superseded in the chief butlership, and to have regained it shortly afterwards. In January 1424 he was appointed a member of the council with a salary of £40, and the next year was one of the commissioners to decide in the dispute between the earl marshal and the earl of Warwick about precedence. In 1430-1 he was appointed one of the executors of the will of the Duchess of York. He was very wealthy, for in the list drawn up in 1436 (after his death) of those from whom the council proposed to borrow money for the war with France, he was put down for £200, a large sum. He died on 14 March 1434, and was buried at Ewelme, where his wife, who died in 1436, was also buried with him. He left one child, Alice, who married first Sir John Philip (died of dysentery at Harfleur, 1415); secondly, Thomas, earl of Salisbury (d. 1428), having no children by either; thirdly, William de la Pole or Poole, earl and afterwards duke of Suffolk (beheaded 1450), by whom she had a son. Jane de la Pole was the duke's illegitimate daughter. [of] The Siege of Harfleur, Normandy 1415, attributed to John Lydgate ...The Duke of Southfolk by our side, He shall come forth with his meiny [men]. After the siege at Harfleur by the army of Henry V, William de la Pole was invalided home and missed the Battle of Agincourt where his brother Michael was killed. He lost father to dysentery and brother to battle in the 1415 campaign. His signature appears in Articles de Monsr. de Warrewyk as one of the Lords of the King's Council on Nov. 9, 1432, which delineated the education of Henry VI by his tutor, Richard de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick. Both William and Alice are mentioned in the Paston Letters as contending with the Pastons. Early on, Richard Wyoth, lawyer and steward of the estates of Bishop Beaufort of Winchester, was an associate of Thomas Chaucer. In the Dispositions of 1427, by Richard Wyoth, executor of Margery, daughter and heir of Edmond Bakon, touching the manor of Gresham which Bakon purchased, temp. Edward III. Margery gave it to Wyoth and other executors to perform her will, with proviso that Philip Vache and Eliz., his wife, should have it during their lives, but that the reversion of it should be sold, giving William, son of Robert Moleyns, the first option of purchase. William Moleyns who was knighted on the eve of Henry V’s coronation was at the center of the controversy involving the manor. He refused to buy, but on the death of said Eliz., however, he did buy the manor for 420 marks, and held it for two years. Wyoth re-entered because part of the purchase-money was unpaid. The manor fell into a complicated contract for the future marriage of Moleyns' daughter Katherine which did not take place, then Wyoth and the Bishop Beaufort's cousin, Thomas Chaucer acquired the manor of Gresham in 1427 and sold it to William Paston, who died in 1444. His heir, John Paston had a conflict over the property rights of Gresham manor with Robert Hungerford who became Lord Moleyns. Thomas Chaucer was connected with the older William Moleyns, for Chaucer’s wife, Maud, was a kinswoman of his. Indeed, the families drew closer in time, for Moleyns’ only son, William, was later to be married at Ewelme, Chaucer’s seat, to one of the daughters of Maud’s half-sister, Joan, daughter of Sir John Raleigh of Nettlecombe. His grand daughter, Eleanor, was to have as one of her godmothers Chaucer’s daughter, Alice, Countess of Salisbury and Duchess of Suffolk. Duke William's son, John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk (d. 1492), involved himself in one of the most controversial episodes in East Anglian society of the time. John tried to influence Parliament and attempted to purchase part of the by- then infamous dispute over the Fastolf inheritance in 1461. Reference to de la Pole's complaint to the King against John Paston is in an Oct 11, 1461, letter to John Paston from Clement Paston. In the footnote to the letter, Pole “was not restored to the dukedom until 1463; but being in favor at court, having married Edward IV’s sister, he seems even at this time to have been popularly called, my Lord of Suffolk.” It is said by the old chronicler of Alice, Lady Pole to her neighbors, that “she could not bid farewell to all her greatness without regret.” The ascent of Chaucer and de la Pole families ended with the death of Alice Chaucer's grandson, John de la Pole, 1st Earl of Lincoln. The earl was pretender to the throne of England and upholder of Lambert Simnel, an actual imposter. John was killed in the Yorkist rebellion at the Battle of Stoke in 1487, the last battle of the War of the Roses. His coat-of-arms shows a white label with three pendants of the elder son as heir to Suffolk. .
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