Henry Chichele ( CHICH-ə-lee; also Checheley; c. 1364 – 12 April 1443) was Archbishop of Canterbury (1414–1443) and the founder of All Souls College, Oxford.
Chichele was born at Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, in 1363 or 1364; Chichele 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 Chichele, who appears in 1368 in 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.
Thomas Chichele's occupation does not appear but his eldest son, William, is on the earliest extant list (1383) of the Grocers' Company in London. On 9 June 1405 Henry 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 he was picked up, as a poor ploughboy "eating his scanty meal off his mother's lap", 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 often claimed that he was one of the earliest scholars of Winchester College, which was historically the sole feeder of New College. However, Winchester was not operational until 1394, by which time Chichele had already left Winchester and Oxford, and he does not feature in the College's complete Register of Scholars. He probably did study under William of Wykeham in Winchester, although not as a scholar of Winchester College, and for this reason can be considered an Old Wykehamist.
Chichele appears in the Hall-books of New College up to the year 1392/93, when he was a B.A. and was absent for ten weeks from about 6 December to 6 March, presumably for the purpose of his ordination as a sub-deacon, which was performed by the bishop of Derry, acting as suffragan to the bishop of London. He was then already beneficed, receiving a royal ratification of his estate as parson of Llanvarchell in the diocese of St Asaph on 20 March 1391/92 (Cat. Pat. Rolls).
In the Hall-book, marked 1393/94, but really for 1394/95, Chichele's name does not appear. He had then left the University of Oxford and gone up to London to practise as an advocate in the principal ecclesiastical court, the Court of Arches. His rise was rapid. Already on 8 February 1395/96 he was, on a commission with several knights and clerks to hear an appeal in a case of John Molton, Esquire v. John Shawe, citizen of London, from Sir John Cheyne kt., sitting for the constable of England in a court of chivalry.
Like other ecclesiastical lawyers and civil servants of the day Chichele was paid with ecclesiastical preferments. On 13 April 1396, he obtained ratification of the parsonage of St Stephen Walbrook, presented on 30 March by the abbot of Colchester, no doubt through his brother Robert, who restored the church and increased its endowment. In 1397 he was made archdeacon of Dorset by Richard Mitford, bishop of Salisbury, but litigation was still going on about it in the papal court until 27 June 1399, when the pope extinguished the suit, imposing perpetual silence on Nicholas Bubwith, master of the rolls, his opponent. In the first year of Henry IV Chichele was parson of Sherston, Wiltshire, and prebendary of Nantgwyly in the college of Abergwili, Wales; on 23 February 1401/2, now called doctor of laws, he was pardoned for bringing in, and allowed to use, a bull of the pope providing to him the chancellorship of Salisbury Cathedral, and canonries in the nuns' churches of Shaftesbury and Wilton in that diocese; and on 9 January 1402/3 he was archdeacon of Salisbury.
This year his brother Robert Chichele was senior sheriff of London. On 7 May 1404, Pope Boniface IX provided him to a prebend at Lincoln, notwithstanding he already held prebends at Salisbury, Lichfield, St Martins-le-Grand and Abergwyly, and the living of Brington. On 9 January 1405 he found time to attend a court at Higham Ferrers and be admitted to a burgage there. In July 1405 Chichele began a diplomatic career by a mission to the new Roman Pope Innocent VII, who was professing his desire to end the schism in the papacy by resignation, if his French rival at Avignon would do likewise. Next year, on 5 October 1406, he was sent with Sir John Cheyne to Paris to arrange a lasting peace and the marriage of Prince Henry with the French princess Marie, which was frustrated by her becoming a nun at Poissy next year.
In 1406 renewed efforts were made to stop the schism, and Chichele was one of the envoys sent to the new Pope Gregory XII. Here he utilised his opportunities. On 31 August 1407 Guy Mone (he is always so spelt and not Mohun, and was probably from one of the Hampshire Meons; there was a John Mone of Havant admitted a Winchester scholar in 1397), Bishop of St Davids, died, and on 12 October 1407 Chichele was by the pope provided to the bishopric of St Davids. Another bull the same day gave him the right to hold all his benefices with the bishopric. He was consecrated on 17 June 1408.
At Siena in July 1408 he and Sir John Cheyne, as English envoys, were received by Gregory XII with special honour, and Bishop Repingdon of Lincoln, ex-Wycliffite, was one of the new batch of cardinals created on 18 September 1408, most of Gregory's cardinals having deserted him. These, together with Benedict's revolting cardinals, summoned a general council at Pisa. In November 1408 Chichele was back at Westminster, when Henry IV received the cardinal archbishop of Bordeaux and determined to support the cardinals at Pisa against both popes. In January 1409 Chichele was named with Bishop Hallam of Salisbury and the prior of Canterbury to represent the Southern Convocation at the council, which opened on 25 March 1409, arriving on 24 April. Obedience was withdrawn from both the existing popes, and on 26 June a new pope elected instead of them.
Chichele and the other envoys were received on their return as saviours of the world; though the result was summed up by a contemporary as trischism instead of schism, and the Church as giving three husbands instead of two. Chichele now became the subject of a leading case, the court of kings bench deciding, after arguments reheard in three successive terms, that he could not hold his previous benefices with the bishopric, and that, spite of the maxim Papa potest omnia, a papal bull could not supersede the law of the land (Year-book ii. H. iv. 37, 59, 79). Accordingly, he had to resign livings and canonries (28 April 1410). As, however, he had obtained a bull (20 August 1409) enabling him to appoint his successors to the vacated preferments, including his nephew William, though still an undergraduate and not in orders, to the chancellorship of Salisbury, and a prebend at Lichfield, he did not go empty away. In May 1410 he went again on an embassy to France; on 11 September 1411 he headed a mission to discuss Henry V's marriage with a daughter of the duke of Burgundy; and he was again there in November.
In the interval Chichele found time to visit his diocese for the first time and be enthroned at St Davids on 11 May 1411. He was with the English force under the earl of Arundel which accompanied the duke of Burgundy to Paris in October 1411 and there defeated the Armagnacs, an exploit which revealed to England the weakness of the French. On 30 November 1411 Chichele, with two other bishops and three earls and the prince of Wales, knelt to the king to receive public thanks for their administration. That he was in high favour with Henry V is shown by his being sent with Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick (1382–1439) to France in July 1413 to conclude peace. Immediately after the death of Thomas Arundel Archbishop of Canterbury the king recommended him to the pope for promotion to the archbishopric on 13 March 1414, signified his royal assent of Chichele's postulation on 23 March 1414, translated by papal bull on 28 April 1414, and received the pall without going to Rome for it on 24 July.