Christopher Cheney

Christopher Robert Cheney (20 December 1906 – 19 June 1987) was an English medieval historian, noted for his work on the medieval English church and the relations of the papacy with England, particularly in the age of Pope Innocent III.

Background Cheney was born on 20 December 1906 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, the fourth and youngest son born to his parents George Gardner Cheney and Christina Stapleton Cheney (nee Bateman). The family's printing company, Cheney and Sons, was founded by an ancestor, John Cheney, in 1767. Later, Christopher collaborated with elder brothers John Cheney (b.1900) and Walter Gardener Cheney (b.1901) on writing histories of the firm, the first in 1936 and a second to celebrate its bicentenary in 1967. He was educated at Banbury County School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours in 1928.

Career Cheney lectured at the University of Cairo, as Assistant Lecturer at University College, London (1931–1933), and then Bishop Fraser Lecturer in Ecclesiastical History University of Manchester (1933–1937) before returning to the Oxford in 1937 as reader in diplomatic and fellow of Magdalen College from 1938. He married Mary Gwendolen Hall on 24 August 1940.

After war service with MI5, Cheney took the chair in medieval history at Manchester in 1945 and was elected a Member of Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society in 1946 while living in Withington, Manchester. During this time, he was involved in the Manchester Branch of the Historical Association, was a Feoffee of Chetham's School and served as President of the Lancashire Parish Register Society from 1946 to 1955. He was a Member of the Canterbury and York Society serving as Treasurer (1942–61) then President (1961–8).

Cheney remained at Manchester until he was elected Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge in 1955. He was invited to deliver the Ford Lectures at the University of Oxford in 1956. He remained at Cambridge as a fellow of Corpus Christi College until his retirement in 1972. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford in 1968.

Cheney was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and served as the society's Joint Literary Director from 1938 until 1945. He was a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and Corresponding Member of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1951 and appointed CBE in 1984. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by the University of Glasgow in 1970 and the University of Manchester in 1978. He died in Cambridge on 19 June 1987. Mary Gwendolen Cheney died at the age of 90 in 2007.

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