Roger Cholmeley
English judge; founder of Highgate School
Sir Roger Cholmeley ( CHUM-lee; sometimes spelled Cholmley or Cholmondeley; c. 1485 – 21 June 1565) was Lord Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench from 1552 to 1553. From 1535 to 1545 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.
Background and early life
Cholmeley 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, Cheshire, is named), including Cholmondeley, Cheshire, previously held by Robert Fitzhugh. Over the centuries, the family name was spelt in many variants as Middle English developed away from French influences. Different branches of the family still spell the name differently, and Cholmeley's most famous cousins, of Cholmondeley, Cheshire, spell it "Cholmondeley". The pronunciation and spelling are neither counterintuitive nor phonetic, but as used down the ages.
Roger Cholmeley was educated to the law at Lincoln's Inn from 1506.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16200843. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1485, 1565, 1552 and 1553.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roger Cholmeley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.