Sir Roger Cholmeley, MP, Lord Chief Justice

Roger Cholmeley

Sir Roger Cholmeley (c. 1485 — 21 June 1565) was Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench from 1552 to 1553. From 1535-45 he was Recorder of London and served in the House of Commons. He is possibly best remembered for his endowment to found a free grammar school, Highgate School, at London.

Cholmeley (sometimes spelled Cholmley) was the illegitimate son of Sir Richard Cholmeley of Yorkshire (c. 1460 – 1521), who served as Lieutenant of the Tower of London from 1513 to 1520. Cholmeley's family can be traced back to the 12th century Robert de Chelmundelegh, second son of William le Belward, who inherited parts of the Barony of Malpas (for which Malpas is named), including Cholmondeley, Cheshire, previously held by Robert Fitzhugh. Over the centuries, the family name was spelled in many variants as middle-English developed away from French influences. Different branches of the family spell the name differently, and Cholmeley's most famous cousins, of Cholmondeley, Cheshire, spell the name "Cholmondeley".[1][2]

Roger Cholmeley was educated to the law at Lincoln's Inn from 1506. Despite being expelled from there three times,[3] he entered the legal profession.[4][5]

Most of Cholmeley's career as a lawyer was spent in the City of London, but he lived at Highgate in Middlesex. In 1520 he was called as a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, in 1531 became a serjeant-at-law, and in November 1534 was knighted. From 1535-45 he was Recorder of London, and was one of the city's members in four parliaments.

In November 1545 Cholmley became chief baron of the Exchequer, and in May 1552 was appointed Chief Justice of the King's Bench. He was Lord Chief Justice for only a year as Queen Mary I would not reappoint him. The same year, he was imprisoned for a month and fined for signing Lady Jane Grey's instrument of succession as Queen. He returned to work as a barrister and was a member of parliament for Middlesex in the early 1550s.[4]

Cholmeley founded Highgate School, which was established by Royal Charter in 1565. Former pupils of the school are known as Old Cholmeleians in his memory. The school has gone on to become a leading independent school (sometimes referred to as a public school). Old Cholmeleians include John Venn, the creator of Venn diagrams, poets Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Betjeman, and musicians John Tavener and John Rutter.[4]

Cholmeley died in London on 21 June 1565.[4]

He married Christine, who died in 1558. They had two daughters:

• Elizabeth, married first to Sir Leonard Beckwith of Selby, Yorkshire, and secondly to Christopher Kern of Kern, Somersetshire;
• Frances, the other daughter, was married to Sir Thomas Russe of Strensham, Worcestershire.[6]

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Cholmeley

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• Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 10
• Cholmley, Roger by George Fisher Russell Barker
• CHOLMLEY, Sir ROGER (fl. 1565), judge, was the natural son of Sir Richard Cholmley, who was knighted by the Earl of Surrey under Henry VII in 1497 for his services against the Scots, and afterwards became lieutenant of the Tower of London. Sir Richard died in 1522, leaving Roger, who had already entered Lincoln's Inn, well provided for. The date of his admission cannot now be found, but from the Black Book of Lincoln's Inn (iii. 22 b) it appears that he was readmitted to that society in Michaelmas term 1 Hen. VIII, and in 1624 was elected to the bench. He held the office of reader of Lincoln's Inn three times (Dugdale, Origines Juridiciales, 1680, . 251), and on All Saints’ day, 21 Hen. VIII, was appointed treasurer. In the following year his name appears as one of the four ‘gubernatores’ of the society (ib. p. 259). In July 1530 he was appointed with three others on the commission to inquire into the possessions of Cardinal Wolsey in Middlesex (Rymer, Fœdera, 2nd edit. xiv. 402-4), and in 1531 was promoted to the dignity of serjeant-at-law.
• In 1535 he was a pointed recorder of London in the place of John Baker, and on 18 Oct. 1537 received the honour of knighthood. In 1540 he was selected as one of the London commissioners to inquire into all transgressions against the Acts of the Six Articles. In 1545 he was made king’s serjeant, having on 10 Nov. in the same year, surrendered the office of recorder, when the corporation granted him a yearly new year’s gift of twenty gold angels. During the ten years he was recorder he was probably returned to parliament as one of the members for the city. The returns for the parliaments of 1536 and 1539 have, however, been lost, and his name is only to be found in the list of the parliament of 1542 (Parl. Papers, 1878, lxii. pt. i. 371-4). On 11 Nov. 1546 he was appointed lord chief baron of 'the exchequer, in the room of Sir Richard Lyster, who had been promoted to the king’s bench. In the following year he was appointed one of the royal commissioners for executing 1 Edw. VI, c. 14, by which the property of all guilds ‘other than such of mysteryes or craftes,' was confiscated to the crown (Memorials of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, p. 105). On the resignation of Lyster, Cholmley became lord chief justice, 2 March 1552. On 27 July 1553, a few days after Mary’s accession to the throne, he and Sir Edward Montague, the chief justice of the common pleas, were committed to the Tower (Stow, Annales, 1615, p. 613) for witnessing the will of Edward VI, whereby the late king had endeavoured to exclude Mary from the throne. After six weeks he was enlarged on the payment of a heavy fine; but, though he was received into the queen’s favour, he was not restored to his seat on the judicial bench, Sir Thomas Bromley being appointed in his lace. Cholmley's name appears in several of the commissions of oyer and terminer in the first year of this reign, one of them being for the trial of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton (Cobbett, State Trials, 1809, i. 870-902, where a curious colloquy between Throckmorton and Chelmley will be found). He was also admitted to the queen’s privy council. After his dismissal from the chief justiceship he retired to where on 15 Feb. 1555 Princess Elisabeth spent the night at his house on her way to court. In 1562 he founded the free grammar school at Highgate for the education of poor boys living in the neighbourhood, which was incorporated by letters patent of Queen Elizabeth on 6 April 1565. He died in the following June and was buried on 2 July at St. Martin's Ludgate, where his wife Christine had been buried early in December 1558. Elizabeth, the elder of his two children, who survived him, was married first to Sir Leonard Beckwith of Selby, Yorkshire, and secondly to Christopher Kern of Kern, Somersetshire. Frances, the other daughter, was married to Sir Thomas Russe of Strensham, Worcestershire. By his will, dated April 1565, Chelmley devised his messuage in the parish of Christ Church in Newgate Market, London, then in the tenure angaoccupation of Laurence Shyriff, grocer, to certain trustees, upon trust, towards Lincoln’s Inn. There can be but little doubt that this identifies the shop in which the founder of Rugby School carried on business. Roger Ascham relates in his ‘Scholæmaster' 'a notable tale that old Sir Leger Chamloe, sometime chief justice, would of himself. When he was ancient in inn of court, certain young gentlemen were brought before him to be conrected for certain misorders; and one of the lustiest said, “Sir, we be young gentlemen; and wise men before us have proved all fashions, aud yet those have done full well” This they said, because it was well known that Sir Roger had been a good fellow in his youth. But he answered them very wisely: “Indeed,” saith he, “in youth I was, as you are now; and I had twelve fellows like unto myself, but not one of them came unto a good end. And therefore follow not my example in youth, but follow my counsel in age, if ever ye think to come to this place, or to these years that I am come unto; lest you meet either with poverty or Tyburn in the way” ’ (Ascham, Works, 1815, pp. 229-30).
• [Foss%E2%80%99s Judges of England (1857), v. 293-8; Recorders of the County of Loudon from 1298 to 1860 (printed by the direction of the court of aldermen), p. 8; Maitland’s History of London (1756), pp. 1198, 1205-6; Machyn’s Diary (Camden Soc. Pub. 1848); Fuller’s Worthing (1840), ln. 415; Carlis1es Endowed Grammar Schools (1818), n. 162-3; Picketts Highgate (1842), pp. 28-31; Gent. Mag. (1823), xciii. (pt. 1.) 238-9; Notes and Queries, 3rd series, i. 47-8, 5th series, i. 209.]
• From: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Cholmley,_Roger_(DNB00) _______________________
• CHOLMLEY, Sir Roger (bef.1495-1565), of London and Highgate, Mdx.
• b. bef. 1495, illegit. s. of Sir Richard Cholmley (d.1521) of Thornton-on-the-Hill, Yorks. educ. L. Inn, adm. bef. 1509, called by Nov. 1518. m. c. 22 May 1518, Christiana Hurst (d.1558), wid., 2da. Kntd. by 30 Jan. 1535.4
• Offices Held
  • Bencher, L. Inn 1520, Lent reader 1524, 1529, Autumn reader 1531, treasurer Nov. 1529, gov. 1530.
• Common pleader, London 1518-35, recorder 1535-45; j.p. Mdx. 1522-d., Essex 1528-47, liberty of St. Alban’s 1538-40, Herts., Kent, Surr., Suss. 1547, Surr. 1562-d.; commr. subsidy, Mdx. 1524, benevolence 1544/45, musters 1546, chantries, London, Westminster, Mdx. 1546, 1548, contribution, Mdx. 1546, of Admiralty in Nov. 1547, relief, London, Westminster, Mdx. 1550, goods of churches and fraternities 1553, loan, Mdx. 1562; other commissions 1530-d.; serjeant-at-law 1531; bailiff, duchy of Cornw., Newport, Essex 1533-40; chief baron, Exchequer 1545-52; receiver of petitions in the Lords, Parlts. of 1545, 1547, Mar. 1553; custos rot. Mdx. 1547; jt. ld. lt. 1552, 1553; c.j.K.B. 1552-3.5
• By his will of 26 Dec. 1521 Sir Richard Cholmley bequeathed to his bastard son lands in Essex and Middlesex, but the family’s estates in Yorkshire and Cumberland went to the heir, Roger Cholmley’s uncle. Cholmley had earlier been promised lands worth £20 a year, evidently a more generous provision, for his father specially enjoined him ‘to be with this my bequest contented, whatsoever I have spoken or said before’. The support which he later gave his cousin Richard Cholmley in his bid for the deputy stewardship of Pickering suggests that he was satisfied with this disposition.6
• By this time Cholmley was established at Lincoln’s Inn. The date of his first admission is not known, but he appears to have been readmitted in 1509. At first he seems to have been a rather unruly member, but when in later years he was reminded that he had been ‘a good fellow’ in his younger days, he advised other rowdy young men to ‘follow not my example in youth, but follow my counsel in age, if ever you think to come to this place or to these years that I am come unto; lest you meet either with poverty or Tyburn in the way’. None the less, his ability was quickly recognized and he was called to be serjeant-at-law when probably still in his thirties. Richard Morison in his treatise on law reform, arguing the necessity of a wider education for lawyers, exempted him from his strictures: ‘How shall a lawyer, Mr. Cholmley excepted, be able to make an oration ... without the knowledge of rhetoric?’7
• Although as a serjeant Cholmley was technically disqualified from becoming recorder of London, he had been one of the common pleaders of London since 1518, he was ‘greatly friended amongst the attorneys and such other as be learned in the laws within the City’, and he had the support of both the King and Cromwell. True, Cholmley had reproached the minister a year earlier for being his ‘heavy master’ over his fine for avoiding knighthood, an honour which he was soon afterwards obliged to accept, but in general their relationship seems to have been amicable: Sir William Gascoigne, who had married Sir Richard Cholmley’s widow, was a friend of Cromwell. It was ‘at the petition and request’ of the minister that the City’s rule was waived and Cholmley elected recorder on 17 June 1535. As recorder he was to be involved in the treason trials of 1538 and 1539. He was also engaged in a series of negotiations with the government on behalf of the City over such matters as the boundaries of the sanctuary of St. Martin’s, the liberties of the City within the borough of Southwark, the right claimed by the King to appoint the keeper of Blackwell hall, the jurisdiction of the mayor over Thames fishermen, and the payment of tithes.8
• Some of these issues were also raised in Parliament. The recorder was normally one of London’s four Members. Indeed, his election may have become obligatory: so at least the recorder of Gloucester, Richard Pate, was to argue in 1572, when he reminded William Cecil, Lord Burghley, that after Gloucester’s refusal to elect him to Parliament in the previous year he had written to Burghley and other lords, who had ‘caused a precedent to be searched for, which was found 27 Henry VIII, being a supersedeas for the discharge of a like election in London of two knights of the Parliament because Sir Roger Cholmley then recorder there was left out and not elected for one of them’. If Pate remembered the date correctly, the occasion can only have been a by-election to the Parliament of 1529, and its timing would fit the replacement of Sir Thomas Seymour I, who offered to vacate his seat on 2 Dec. 1535 and died soon after, and John Baker I, Cholmley’s precursor as recorder. However that may be, Cholmley was elected in time to take his seat in the last session of this Parliament, for an Act then passed (27 Hen. VIII, c.43) was signed by him and three other lawyers, probably acting as a committee of the Commons.9
• Although there is no record of Cholmley’s election to the next Parliament, that of June 1536, evidence for his Membership is found on the dorse of two Acts which it passed, one for depriving abjurors in certain cases of their clergy and the other for continuing expiring laws, where among a series of lawyers’ names (including Sir William Gascoigne’s) there appears ‘Mr. Recorder’. He was certainly a Member of the Parliament of 1539, for by the Subsidy Act of its second session (32 Hen. VIII, c.50) the appointment of collectors of fifteenths and tenths was vested in the Members and Cholmley was one of those who appointed collectors in London. Moreover, he had taken advantage of his Membership to ensure the inclusion of his name in the preamble to the Act for changing the custom of gavelkind (31 Hen. VIII, c.3). Two days before Parliament met, the City’s counsel had been ordered by the court of aldermen to ‘draw a bill unto the Parliament house for to limit how far the bounds of the pretenced sanctuary of St. Martin’s shall extend’, but no such Act was passed.10
• In the first session of the next Parliament the City planned to put in a bill defining its liberties within Southwark, and Cholmley was sent to ask the ‘lawful favour’ of Sir John Gage, King’s steward of Southwark; during the next session, a year later, he was again sent to Gage, this time to give him a copy of the act of common council for the assize of wood ‘to cause thereby an Act of Parliament to be drawn for the good and true making and assizing of ... wood throughout the realm’. The first of these bills came to nothing but the second was probably the basis of the Act for the assize of wood and coal (33 Hen. VIII, c.3). Other bills of the first session also concerned the City. On 16 Mar. 1542 Cholmley asked the court of aldermen whether ‘he should move that there might be an especial proviso made for the city of London for shooting in handguns ... as there is a bill put into the Parliament house for the taking away and restraint of shooting in the same’: the court decided that he should ‘suffer the same bill to pass as it is drawn, without any contradiction’. Five days later the aldermen had a long debate on the tithes question and finally agreed ‘that Mr. Recorder shall answer the matter in the Parliament house as he shall think good, not confessing any authority to be given unto him therein by this house’. During the second session, on 8 May 1543, Cholmley reported to the court of aldermen that ‘this day a bill concerning the punishment of fishermen upon the river Thames, much beneficial for the City, is passed the Common House’; he therefore asked for ‘suit to be made to the Lords for their favour in the furtherance of the same’, but the session ended four days later and the bill did not become law.11
• In the third and last session of this Parliament the City feared legislation against its interests and a week before Parliament reassembled the recorder and all the legal counsel were called to meet regularly ‘for the staying of such matters as may chance to be moved to the hindrance of the said City at the Parliament’. Two bills were later specified by the aldermen: on 31 Jan. 1544 Cholmley and the common serjeant, Robert Broke, were asked ‘to endeavour themselves to the best of their powers for the staying of the bill put into the Parliament house against merchants for buying of steel and other merchandises’, and on 21 Feb. it was agreed that all the City’s Members should be specially asked to oppose ‘a bill drawn to be put into the Parliament house against merchants for packing of woollen cloths, the surmise whereof is that they do usually pack money, both silver and gold, in their said cloths’. On the other hand Cholmley reported on 11 Mar. ‘that he had moved the lords of the Council especially for their favours for the preferment of the bill in the Parliament house concerning the river of Thames’—probably the bill of the previous session— ‘and that they gently agreed to further it as much as they lawfully might do’. None of these bills, welcome or unwelcome in London, passed the Commons.12
• Cholmley was again elected to Parliament by the City on 19 Jan. 1545, but before its delayed opening on 23 Nov. he was appointed chief baron of the Exchequer and resigned his office of recorder: on 17 Nov. 1545 the new recorder, Robert Broke, was elected to Parliament in his place. As chief baron and, later, chief justice of the King’s bench, Cholmley was summoned to an advisory place in the House of Lords, where he was a receiver of petitions in 1545, 1547 and March 1553: he also served on a number of committees. With other judges he signed the letters patent of 21 June 1553 for the succession to the crown of Lady Jane, although he did not subscribe the promise ‘never to vary or swerve’ from the succession so established and was not employed in drawing up the instrument. Nevertheless, with the triumph of Mary he was imprisoned in the Tower on 26 July, and was only released on 6 Sept. ‘with a great fine’: on 4 Oct. 1553 his office of chief justice was committed to (Sir) Thomas Bromley I. He was, however, quickly back in practice. On 2 Dec. as one of the counsel for those who had received grants of lands formerly belonging to the attainted 3rd Duke of Norfolk, he asked the House of Commons to hear him in connexion with the bill to reverse the attainder: he was so far successful on his clients’ behalf as to secure a compromise settlement.13
• Cholmley remained a justice of the peace, but in Middlesex only. He was also named a commissioner for the treason trials of 1554 and 1555; Princess Elizabeth stayed at his Highgate house on her way to London in 1554, and Catherine, wife of John Astley and the princess’s companion, was for some time in his charge; and in 1557 he was appointed to a commission to inquire into heresies and seditious books. Evidently his loyalty was not in question, although he was never again given legal office. He probably lived in semi-retirement either at his mansion in the Old Bailey, in the parish of St. Martin’s, Ludgate, or at Highgate. It was this last residence which qualified him to sit as a knight of the shire for Middlesex in Mary’s last three Parliaments and in the first Parliament of Elizabeth. In each of the Marian Parliaments he had bills committed to him, two in her third, one in her fourth and, assuming that the Member concerned was not his cousin Sir Richard Cholmley, one in her fifth.14
• Cholmley had greatly increased his patrimony and also held lands in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire, Kent, Worcestershire and Yorkshire. In 1557 he gave his manors of Over Strensham, Worcestershire, and Broad Campden, Gloucestershire, to his daughter Frances and her husband (Sir) Thomas Russell. Early in the reign of Elizabeth, he founded a free grammar school at Highgate. He died on 21 June 1565, having made his will in the previous April, and was buried in St. Martin’s, Ludgate, on 2 July.15
• From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1509-1558/member/ch... _____________
• CHOLMLEY, Sir Roger (c.1495-1565), of Ludgate, London, Highgate and Hampstead, Mdx.
• Family and Education
• b. c.1495, illegit. s. of Sir Richard Cholmley. educ. L. Inn, adm. bef. 1509, called by Nov. 1518. m. by 1522, Christine or Christiana (d.1558), 2da. Kntd. by 1535.2
• Offices Held
  • Bencher, L. Inn 1520, Lent reader 1528, Autumn reader 1531, treasurer Nov. 1529, gov. 1530.
• Common pleader, London 1518-35; j.p. Mdx. from 1522, Essex 1528-54, Herts., Kent, Suss. 1547-54, Surr. 1547-54, from 1562; serjeant-at-law 1531; recorder, London 1535-45; King’s serjeant 1545; chief baron of the Exchequer Nov. 1545-52; c.j. King’s bench 1552-3; dep. lt. Mdx. 1552.3
• Biography
• Cholmley’s father left him lands in Middlesex and Essex, and he later acquired estates in Surrey, Kent, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire. His valuable property in London and Middlesex included former monastic lands and houses in Woolwich and East Ham, as well as a number of shops in the parish of St. Martin, Ludgate. In later life he spent much of his time at Highgate, where he founded the public school, incorporated by letters patent in 1565, originally called the free grammar school of Sir Roger Cholmley. The earliest references to him in the Lincoln’s Inn records show him frequently fined as an unruly member of the society, but his ability led to rapid preferment, and after his elevation to the bench he is said to have remembered his own wild youth when dealing with young men brought before him.4
• There are few references to Cholmley after Elizabeth’s accession. In December 1558 a secret commission was set up to inquire into judgments he had given in the previous reign, but no action is known to have been taken against him. He remained on the commission of the peace for Middlesex and Surrey, the bishops’ letters to the Council in 1564 describing him as ‘indifferent’ in religion. He died 21 June 1565. His will, dated the previous April, was proved two days after his burial in St. Martin’s, Ludgate, on 2 July the same year. His widowed daughter Elizabeth Beckwith and his grandson John Russell II were co-heirs. Cholmley may have disapproved of Elizabeth’s projected second marriage to Christopher Kerne; at any rate the will arranged that if the marriage took place Sir William Cordell and others should be trustees to administer Elizabeth’s share of the estate. There is no mention of the Highgate school, but the will included charitable bequests to poor prisoners and for poor maidens’ marriages. The executors were Cordell and Cholmley’s son-in-law Sir Thomas Russell, with the Earls of Leicester and Bedford as supervisors.5
• Ref Volumes: 1558-1603
• Author: N. M. Fuidge
• Notes
• 1. Did not serve for the full duration of the Parliament.
• 2. PCC 22 Maynwaryng; DNB; Foster, Yorks. Peds. N. and E. Riding; CPR, 1553 and App. Edw. VI, pp. 38-9; Machyn Diary (Cam. Soc. xlii), 181, 368-9; LP Hen. VIII, viii. 40.
• 3. London Rep. 3, f. 207; Rep. 9, if. 112-13; Rep. II, f. 244; LP Hen. VIII, iii(2), p. 1263; iv(a), p. 2217; xx(2), p. 448; CPR , 1550-3, p. 296; 1553-4, p. 21; 1560-3, pp. 440-1; APC, iv. 50, 277.
• 4. PCC 22 Maynwaryng; LP Hen. VIII, iv(2), p. 1183; ix. 247; xiii(l), p. 395; xv. 475; xviii(l), pp. 259, 550; xix(2), p. 81; xx(2), p. 208; xxi(l), p. 687; xxi(2), p. 372; C142/144/85; E150/530/2; CPR, 1548-9, p. 61; 1563-6, pp. 207-8, 280; DNB; Highgate Sch. Reg. (5th ed.), ed. Tucker, pp. x-xv; L. Inn Black Bks. i. 180-1, 188, 210, 220; R. Ascham, Works, 229-30.
• 5. APC, vii. 22; Cam. Misc. ix(3), p. 60; PCC 24 Morrison; C142/144/85; E150/530/2
• From: http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1558-1603/member/ch... _______________________________
• Links
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highgate_School
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cholmondeley
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Chief_Justice_of_England_and_Wales
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recorder_of_London

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