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Sir Thomas Cheney (or Cheyne) ( – 16 December 1558) of the Blackfriars, City of London and Shurland, Isle of Sheppey, Kent, was an English administrator and diplomat, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports in south-east England from 1536 until his death.
Thomas Cheney's father, William, was the eldest surviving of eight sons and a daughter, and at his death in 1487 his property in Kent was inherited by Francis Cheyne (d. 1512), his son and heir by his first marriage, but was in the possession of Francis Cheney's uncle, John Cheyne, Baron Cheyne until the latter's death without issue in 1499. Baron Cheyne's heir, his brother, Robert Cheney, died without issue in 1503, at which time Francis Cheney 'wrongfully took possession of their lands in Berkshire and Kent which should by an earlier settlement have passed to John, the son of a younger brother Roger'. Francis Cheney died without issue in January 1512, and Thomas Cheney succeeded to his father William's lands; however the other properties wrongfully acquired by Francis Cheney were awarded in 1515 to his cousin, John son of Roger Cheyne (d. 1499) of West Woodhay, Berkshire.
He was a favourite of Henry VIII's mistress, Anne Boleyn to whom he was distantly related, and she fought Cardinal Wolsey for his promotion in 1528 and 1529. However, it was not until 1535–40 that Cheney consolidated his authority as one of the most powerful men in the south-east of England. From Henry VIII's coming to the throne of England in 1509, Cheney served as Lord Warden, spanning the reigns of all five of the Tudor dynasty monarchs. Cheney was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520, and served three times as an ambassador to France, under the authority of Henry VIII and Francois I of France, between 1549 and 1553. He was Treasurer of the Household from early 1530, and he is recorded as being present at over half of the Privy Council meetings held between 1540 and 1543.
He represented Kent as a knight of the shire in every parliament from 1539 to 1558 with the single exception of the election in 1555.
Cheney was among those councillors entrusted with the government of the realm during Somerset's Scottish campaign of 1547. He was among those who sanctioned Gardiner's imprisonment in June 1548, and he was involved in the interrogation of Sir Thomas Seymour in 1549.
In 1550, he became a privy counsellor and owner of the Manor of Ospringe (in the parish of Faversham).
In April 1545 Cheney suffered a bout of illness, and was temporarily replaced in his duties as the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports by Sir Thomas Seymour, Hertford's brother. For the next four months Cheney delegated his responsibilities in the Cinque Ports and Kent to Seymour.
In January 1554, Cheney gathered a force in Kent to resist Wyatt's rebellion.David Loades, Two Tudor Conspiracies (Cambridge: CUP, 1965), pp. 63–44. In London, there was a rumour that he held Dover Castle for the rebels.John Gough Nichols, Chronicle of Queen Jane (London: Camden Society, 1850), p. 36. So fickle a courtier was he that the Marian Court privately distrusted his loyalty during the outbreak of the rebellion by his friend and neighbour Sir Thomas Wyatt, but the very fact that he sent men against Northumberland indicates something of his position.David Loades, Two Tudor Conspiracies (Cambridge: CUP, 1965), pp. 83–84. Cheney was initially distrusted by Mary, as she confessed to the imperial ambassador Simon Renard. His early show of support proved shrewd as Cheney retained his position as Treasurer of the Household whilst other household officers were replaced.David Loades, The Reign of Mary Tudor: Politics, Government and Religion in England 1553-58 (Longman, 1979), p. 42.
According to Lennard, Anne, Frances and Katherine were all daughters of Cheney's first marriage:
Sir Henry Cheyne, knight, summoned in 1572 as Lord Cheyne of Toddington, died s.p. in 1587, having wasted his estate. His three half-sisters, daughters of the first marriage of his father Sir Thomas Cheyne of Sheppey, K.G., were his coheirs. Anne Cheyne, the third of these, was the first wife of Sir John Perrot, the lord deputy of Ireland, and mother of Thomas Perrot his heir. Sir John Perrot, who was reckoned a bastard son of Henry VIII., died in 1592.
Cheney married secondly, by dispensation dated 24 May 1539, Anne Broughton (d. 16 May 1562), stepdaughter and ward of John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, and daughter of Sir John Broughton (d. 24 January 1518). Anne Sapcote (d. March 1558/9), A Who’s Who of Tudor Women: Sa–Sn compiled by Kathy Lynn Emerson to update and correct Wives and Daughters: The Women of Sixteenth-Century England (1984) Retrieved 18 August 2013. of Toddington, Bedfordshire, by Anne Sapcote (d. 14 March 1559), and granddaughter of Sir Robert Broughton by his first wife, Katherine de Vere, said to have been the illegitimate daughter of John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford, by whom he had a son, Henry Cheyne, 1st Baron Cheyne of Toddington, and a daughter. There is a monument to Cheyney's second wife at Toddington.
According to Rev. R. A. Maddison's "Lincolnshire Wills 1600-1617" (1891), Cheney also had an illegitimate "natural" son and daughter, Frances (c.1536-c.1608) who married her cousin William Cheney. Their daughter Elizabeth married John Killingworth. Elizabeth and John's daughter, Anne, married Richard Skepper (c.1495- c.1556). Richard Skepper had married as his 2nd wife Joan Legard whose son Edward (c.1552-c.1629) was the father of the Reverend William Skepper (1597-c.1650) - the "godson" of Frances Cheney. 'Willesden: Manors', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 7: Acton, Chiswick, Ealing and Brentford, West Twyford, Willesden (1982), pp. 208–216. Retrieved 18 August 2013.
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