page_title: Henry Chichele
section_title: Royal service
hierarchical_section_title: Henry Chichele / Career / Royal service
caption_attribution_description: English: Effigy of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, from his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral
context_page_description: Henry Chichele was Archbishop of Canterbury and founded All Souls College, Oxford.
context_section_description: This year Chichele's brother Robert 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 Chicheley 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 David's, died, and on 12 October 1407 Chichele was by the pope provided to the bishopric of St David's. 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 wholesale (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 deat
caption: Henry's tomb effigy
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