Henry le Chen

Henry le Chen [le Cheyn, le Chein, Cheyne, de Chene] was a late 13th-century and early 14th-century Scoto-Norman bishop. Hector Boece claims that he was the nephew of John III Comyn, Lord of Badenoch, but no contemporary evidence supports this. Cheyne belonged to a family with Norman roots which was well established in the northeast of Scotland, holding significant amounts of territory on the boundaries of the Earldom of Buchan.

Life Henry emerges for the first time - as Precentor of Aberdeen Cathedral - when his name occurs in a document dated to 22 January 1277. Despite the fact he was only a deacon, after the death of the former bishop, Hugh de Benin, the chapter unanimously elected le Chen to be the new Bishop of Aberdeen. Pope Martin IV originally cancelled the election because le Chen had not been yet ordained a priest, but reversed his decision and commissioned Robert Wishart, Alan de St Edmund and William, the bishops of Glasgow, Caithness and Dunblane respectively, to consecrate le Chen after one of them had ordained him a priest.

In 1309 he attended Robert's first parliament and was part of the renewal of the Treaty of Perth in 1312, but Bishop Henry nevertheless held a low profile for the remainder of the decade. However, despite the complete success of the Bruce cause, no other bishop is found to be promoted, and le Chen was a loyal subject of the king by the end of the decade when he was summoned to the papal curia (16 August 1320) to account for the behaviour of his king. On 16 June 1321, Pope John XXII excommunicated Bishop Henry, and on 23 May 1322, commanded the bishops of Winchester and Dunblane to promulgate the sentence.

Henry died c.1328 and certainly before 11 June 1329, the same year as King Robert. Pope John XXII referred to le Chen as "of good memory", meaning that Henry had been absolved of his sentence before his death. He was credited with constructing a bridge over the river Don.