Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chesterfield, Thomas
CHESTERFIELD, THOMAS (d. 1451 or 1452), canon of Lichfield, was the author of a chronicle of the bishops of Coventry and Lichfield, extending from the foundation of the see to 1347, and printed in Henry Wharton's ‘Anglia Sacra,’ i. 423–43 (1691). From the date at which the work terminates it was presumed by William Whitlocke, who continued it to 1559, that Chesterfield flourished about the middle of the fourteenth century; and this opinion was accepted by Wharton (l.c., præf. p. xxxvi), who thought to corroborate his view by an extract relative to him from Archbishop Stafford's register, forgetting that Stafford was primate from 1443 to 1452, so that the passage cited must belong not to 1347 but to 1447. It must have been in 1447, during a vacancy of the see of Lichfield, that Chesterfield was entrusted by Archbishop Stafford with the custody of the spiritualities of the bishopric. This is indeed known to be Chesterfield's date. He is styled indifferently by this name and that of Worshop or Wursop, from which it may perhaps be inferred that he belonged to a Worksop family settled at Chesterfield. According to Wharton (l.c.) and Tanner (Bibl. Brit. p. 176), he was a bachelor of laws, but of what university we are not informed. On 8 Feb. 1424–5 he was admitted prebendary of Tervin in the church of Lichfield (Le Neve, Fasti, ed. Hardy, i. 630); and on 31 Oct. 1428 he became archdeacon of Salop (ib. p. 674). The latter preferment he resigned before August 1431. Many years later, on 13 Jan. 1449–50, he was collated to the prebend of Moreton Magna in Hereford Cathedral (ib. p. 515). In an indenture of 1451, where he is called simply 'canon residentiary of Lichfield and prebend of Tervyn' (Bodl. Libr. Cod. Ashmol. 1521 b. i. 19), the sub-chanter and vicars of Lichfield Catnedral bind themselves to sing a mass and other anniversary exequies for Chesterfield on account of the great benefits he had done and procured for them and their successors, namely for giving them seventy pounds for the better building of the vicars' hall and repairing their other houses within the precinct of the seat of the vicarage within the close of Lichfield.' From this evidence it does not appear certainly whether Chesterfield was already dead or not; but he must have died some time before the spring or summer of 1452, when his preferments were filled up.
[Gery, in the Appendix to Cave's Historia Literaria, p. 48 b gives Chesterton as an alternative name to Chesterfield.]