Christopher Cheney

Christopher Robert Cheney CBE FBA (20 December 1906 – 19 June 1987) was a 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.

Cheney was born on 20 December 1906 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, to parents George Gardner Cheney and Christina Stapleton Bateman. He was educated at Banbury County School and Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours in 1928.

He lectured at the University of Cairo, University College, London (1931–1933), and the University of Manchester (1933–1937) before returning to the Oxford as reader and fellow of Magdalen College in 1937. He married Mary Hall on 24 August 1940.

After war service with MI5, he took the chair in Medieval History at Manchester in 1945 until his election as the Professor of Medieval History at the University of Cambridge in 1955. He remained at Cambridge as a fellow of Corpus Christi College until his retirement in 1972.

Cheney was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1951 and appointed CBE in 1984. He died in Cambridge on 19 June 1987.