LEYNTON, John

Nothing is known of Leynton’s origins. His career was entirely one of service, first to Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and then as one of his executors. This service began in the mid 1430s,5 Magdalen Coll. Oxf., Cromwell pprs. Misc. 355, m. 4. and from then until his lord’s death in 1456 he was involved, along with William Stanlowe* and John Tailboys*, in nearly all his important transactions.6 e.g. CCR, 1441-7, pp. 223, 288-9; S.J. Payling, Political Society in Lancastrian Eng. 104; E41/313, pp. 10-11. There can be no doubt that Cromwell sponsored both his return to Parliament on 12 Oct. 1450 for Lincoln, a city to which he had no prior or future connexion, and his appointment, while this Parliament was in session, to the receivership of the honour of Bolingbroke.7 C219/16/1; Somerville, i. 579. His lord’s influence also explains the royal grant made to him on 21 June 1451: together with his fellow MP and Cromwell servant, Richard Illingworth*, he was awarded the keeping of 200 acres of waste ground in the forest of Sherwood. A more substantial mark of the status conferred upon him by his high place in Cromwell’s service came at Michaelmas 1454 when he entered Lincoln’s Inn by the privilege of ‘special admission’, a firm indication that he was, by this date, a well established lawyer.8 CFR, xviii. 206-7, 215; L. Inn Adm. i. 12.

Leynton’s career was able to maintain its momentum after his lord’s death due to the central role he played in the executing of his will, of which he was one of the 11 executors nominated in December 1451. His legal training and intimate knowledge of the testator’s affairs was vital to the principal executor, William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester, in the resolution of the problems posed by a more than ordinarily complex will, and it was to Leynton that most of the work fell.9 Test. Ebor. ii (Surtees Soc. xxx), 198; Payling, ‘Execution of the Will of Ralph, Lord Cromwell’, in The Fifteenth Cent. XIII ed. Clark, 1-29. A surviving account of the expenses incurred by the executors between April and August 1459 gives some idea of the extent of his labours. On matters concerned with the will he was paid 41s. for riding about Lincolnshire, a further 66s. 8d. for travelling through Norfolk and other counties, and 21s. for staying at his late lord’s residence at Tattershall for 14 days.10 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, De L’Isle and Dudley mss, U1475/A85.

While the work absorbed most of his energies, it also made Leynton an object of patronage to the several important men who sought to gain from the dismemberment of Cromwell’s great estate. It explains why his late master’s friend, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, while treasurer of England, secured for him his first Exchequer office, worth £7 10s. p.a., and an appointment as a customs controller.11 ‘Exchequer Offs.’ 214. He lost his customs office soon after Talbot lost the treasurership: CPR, 1452-61, p. 459. The earl’s purchase of Cromwell’s desirable manor of South Wingfield (Derbyshire) gave him every incentive to extend such patronage. Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, who was treasurer from June 1463 to November 1464, had a similar incentive, due to his purchase of another valuable Cromwell manor, that of Ampthill (Bedfordshire), and it must be more than coincidence that Leynton’s promotion to the clerkship of the Receipt, with its fee of £15 p.a., came during his treasurership.12 ‘Exchequer Offs.’ 206. Not until Oct. 1473 did Grey finish paying for Ampthill: Payling, ‘Ampthill Dispute’, EHR, civ. 903n. Humphrey Bourgchier*, Lord Cromwell, as husband of one of the coheiresses to the Cromwell inheritance, had an even more powerful incentive to seek the favour of the ubiquitous Leynton. He was in dispute with the executors over his wife’s share of the inheritance, and it was to reward Leynton either for past or anticipated services that, in August 1465, he granted him for life his hereditary office as one of the chamberlains of the Exchequer. This grant received royal confirmation in January 1466, but it was a controversial one. In normal circumstances at this period a man of Leynton’s modest rank could not have aspired to such an office, and the question later arose as to whether Bourgchier was acting ultra vires in making it. After Bourgchier’s death the King, in June 1471, granted the chamberlainship to a more suitable candidate in William, Lord Hastings. Although Leynton’s objection to this grant was referred to the arbitration of two serjeants-at-law and debated in Exchequer chamber, it was over-ruled.13 CPR, 1461-7, p. 483; 1467-77, pp. 310-11; CCR, 1461-8, p. 341; Year Bk. Trin. 11 Edw. IV (Reports del Cases en Ley, 1679), pl. 1. Nevertheless, his near six-year tenure of such an office is ample testimony to the influence bestowed upon him by his role as the working executor of one of the richest of late-medieval noblemen.

There is little else to relate about Leynton’s career. In March 1460, along with other Exchequer officials, he was appointed as one of the receivers of the forfeited Yorkist lands, a reflection of his office rather than his political sympathies. Although he sued out a general pardon in February 1462 he had no difficulty adapting to the new regime. In the same month he was appointed to the joint-keepership, along with John Brydde*, of the royal castle of Horston pending its grant in the following August to William Neville, earl of Kent.14 CPR, 1452-61, p. 572; 1461-7, p. 225; Magdalen Coll., Candlesby deeds 38b; CFR, xx. 63. At about this date he was also a royal creditor: in Hilary term 1464 he sued the prior of Ixworth (Suffolk) in the Exchequer of pleas for the prior’s failure, as collector of a clerical tenth, to redeem a tally of 40 marks assigned to our MP by Edward IV in repayment of a loan. Later, shortly before April 1470, he contributed 40 marks to a loan raised for the King by John Hulcote†. It is an indication of his wealth and status that this was the same sum advanced by the dean of St. Paul’s and the chief baron of the Exchequer.15 E13/149, rot. 71; E404/74/3/6. For other loans he made to the King in the late 1460s and early 1470s: E405/41, rot. 1; 48, rot. 2; 51, rot. 2; 53, rot. 1. At his death he reckoned the Crown owed him 70 marks: PCC 19 Wattys (PROB11/6, f. 138v).

Throughout the 1460s and into the 1470s Leynton continued to be involved with the executing of his first lord’s will. For example, in 1467 he acted for Richard Quatermayns* in an exchange with the King of the manor of Hambleton – which Cromwell had purchased from the King’s father and which Cromwell’s executors had sold to Quatermayns – for manors forfeited by William, Viscount Beaumont.16 CPR, 1467-77, pp. 40-41, 399. A letter he wrote from London in 1472 to John Gigur, warden of Tattershall College, in connexion with the will, brings out something of his character. He appears forthright, decisive and efficient. He writes scathingly of the administrative acumen of Robert Radcliffe†, who had married Bourgchier’s widow, and of the honesty of one Curteys of Grantham, who ‘hath sold to many fals halpeny worthes of stynkyng fysshe to compare with a lord or with any gentelman’.17 HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, i. 186-8. The letter’s reference to the absence of John Eltenhed† in Calais dates it to 1472.

Another revealing document is the will Leynton drew up on 14 May 1474.18 PCC 19 Wattys; Assoc. Archit. Socs. Reps. and Pprs. xli. 188-9. It shows that his connexions lay with the city of London rather than Lincolnshire, which may have been his native county. He wished to be buried in the London church of the Friars’ Preacher,19 That he was buried there is confirmed by Harl. 6033, f. 30v. leaving £40 to the prior and convent for prayers for his soul, and bequeathed £10 out of the 70 marks owed him by the Crown to the house of Trinitarian friars at Hounslow, of which he was a lay brother. His friendships appear to have revolved around the two institutions to which he had been closely attached, namely Lincoln’s Inn and the Exchequer. He left his book of statutes to John Sulyard* and his abridgement of the statutes to John Haugh, both leading fellows of his Inn. But his greatest generosity was reserved for a junior Exchequer official named Thomas Deryngton, whom he had appointed to the clerkship of the counterpells in about 1466. As much as 100 marks was bequeathed to Thomas, his wife and daughter, raising the possibility that Thomas had married a natural daughter of Leynton, although the will gives no direct indication that our MP had a family. Another Exchequer official, John More, a native of Lincolnshire, whom Leynton had appointed to the deputy chamberlainship in 1470, was left a gold cross and £20 in money.20 For Exchequer appointments of Deryngton and More: ‘Exchequer Offs.’ 24, 182.

The rest of Leynton’s will dealt with unfinished business concerning the execution of Cromwell’s testament. One matter appears to have particularly played on his mind. William Say (d.1468), former dean of the King’s chapel, had laid in pledge to the executors a book called ‘Avicene’ for a far less valuable book of Cromwell’s which he had then failed to return. Leynton instructed his fellow executor, (Sir) Thomas Tyrell*, to negotiate with Say’s executors ‘as conscience shall require’. The will also shows that Leynton had not been successful in securing all the moneys owing to him as the most active of Lord Ralph’s executors. At an unknown date, but probably shortly after Cromwell’s death, his fellow executors awarded him a fee of £20 p.a. in recognition of his past and in anticipation of his future labours, but by November 1466 he was owed £665 in respect of arrears for the fee and the money he had paid out of his own resources in connexion with the execution. This debt had risen, by April 1469, to over £915, and when he came to draw up his own will it still stood by his own reckoning at nearly £700. He laid down that 100 marks of this sum was to be paid to Tyrell and the remainder was to go to the building of Tattershall College in return for prayers for his soul. Clearly by the end of his life he had come to see his late master’s great project as in part his own. Further resources for endowing prayers for his soul were to be raised by the sale of the manor of ‘Gunvyles’ in Wymondham (Norfolk). That he held this manor was also due to his lengthy and arduous service to Cromwell. Between November 1466 and April 1469 his fellow executors, in consultation with the ordinary, ruled that this merited the additional reward of land worth £40 p.a. or £800 in cash. To this end ‘Gunvyles’ was granted to him. He instructed his own executors to sell it for the best market price and to put the profits to ‘such dedes of pite as theim shall thinke moost pleasing to god and for the surest relief of my soule’. This great investment in his soul’s welfare may reflect a concern to redress injustices committed in his service to Cromwell; it certainly reflects his lack of legitimate issue with a claim on his hard-earned wealth. His will was proved on 4 Nov. 1474.21 Magdalen Coll., Misc. 355, mm. 3d, 4, 5; PCC 19 Wattys.