John Chideock

Sir John IV Chideock (died 1415) was an English landowner, administrator, soldier, and politician who lived at Chideock in Dorset and sat as Member of Parliament for the county in 1414.

Origins

Born about 1375, he was the son and heir of Sir John III Chideock of Chideock (died 1390), himself the son and heir of Sir John II Chideock MP of Chideock who had married the heiress Isabel Fitzpayn (some sources claim that Sir John III and his heirs thus became Barons Fitzpayn). His mother was Joan St Loe, daughter of Sir John St Loe MP of Newton St Loe and his first wife Alice Pavely.

Career

On his father's death in 1390, he inherited family estates at Chideock, More Crichel, and East Chelborough in Dorset and at Allowenshay and Kingston Pitney in Somerset. All but East Chelborough were kept by his father-in-law, Sir Ivo Fitzwaryn, who had undertaken to support his daughter and her husband while under age, and not released for about nine years.

Before March 1398 he was involved in a lawsuit over lands and rents at Kingston Pitney and Yeovil in Somerset against various parties including Alice Holland, Countess of Kent, Joan Fitzalan, Countess of Hereford, and an unidentified Richard Chideock. This dragged on until May 1402 when he agreed to pay 800 marks to Alice, for which he had to borrow 770 marks from his wife's brother-in-law Richard Whittington MP. It is possible that his stepfather John Bathe MP, who was on good terms with Alice and her family, encouraged him to reach a settlement.

In 1409, when his stepfather died, he inherited further estates that had belonged to his mother. These were situated at Little Crichel in Dorset, Westbury and Hilperton in Wiltshire, and Clifton and Frampton-on-Severn in Gloucestershire. To all these landholdings, which made him a wealthy man, were added the whole patrimony of the Fitzwaryn family when his father-in-law died in 1414 leaving his wife sole heiress.