ONEWYN, Robert I

Like his father, after whom he was named, Onewyn represented Rye in four Parliaments, as well as serving as mayor for a number of terms. The father died at some point between August 1427 and February 1428, by which date land of his was said to belong to his heirs.5 Cat. Rye Recs. deed 122/6. It looks as if Robert junior had already come of age as in the following May, in association with his father’s close friend Roger atte Gate of Winchelsea, he received from Richard Markham of Sandwich and his wife Alice (daughter and heir of William atte Vawte†) possession of 18 acres of marshland, called St. Mary’s croft, and a vacant place with a cellar in Rye. Various subsequent transactions relating to the same property led eventually to it being leased in 1444 to the royally appointed bailiff of Rye, Thomas Pope*, for seven years, with remainder to Onewyn and his wife and heirs, and in tail to John Greenford*, the steward of Dover castle, and his wife. The two women were atte Gate’s daughters and coheirs.6 Ibid. 122/10. Onewyn’s inheritance also included lands called ‘Portesmotheslands’ and more at Peasmarsh, which his father’s widow retained for the rest of her life,7 Ibid. 136/182, 185. and lands in Rye, Udimore and Brede purchased by his father, which from 1431 he held jointly with atte Gate.8 Ibid. 136/186. Later in the 1430s he took possession of ‘Goldhope garden’ and ‘Goldhope Melbergh’ in Playden, held of Robertsbridge abbey, but he later fell out with the abbot and convent over his tenancy of the mill there, which was removed from his tenure as he had failed to keep it in adequate repair. Onewyn protested that he had never received the court rolls of Playden, whereby he might have amended or ‘appaired’ the property.9 Ibid. 123/1, 2. A landlord himself, he collected rents from vacant plots in Rye.10 Ibid. 136/194, 196, 137/17. As a Portsman, he could claim exemption from taxation on his chattels outside the liberty of the Port, notably in the hundred of Colspore, although there, as at Playden, he took insufficient care of his property: by his default ‘Shebhamlake’ became noxious to the countryside.11 E179/229/138; Lathe Ct. Rolls (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxxvii), 149. An important lease came his way in 1447, when he and John Sutton* the fishmonger joined a local husbandman in obtaining for five years from Adam Levelord* the manor of Leasam in Brede, for which they agreed to pay as much as £20 p.a.12 Cat. Rye Recs. deed 137/13. On this occasion, Onewyn was styled ‘gentleman’, but in later years he was more generally known as ‘esquire’, as when, in 1459, he was listed with the leading householders of Rye immediately after the mayor, and assessed at the highest amount of 3s. 4d. Only 20 out of the 76 people assessed were rated so highly.13 Ibid. 122/12; Rye mss, 60/2, f. 64.

Onewyn took a prominent part in the government of Rye and in the deliberations of the Cinque Ports generally. On as many as 25 occasions between 1446 and 1458 he was sent as a delegate from his home town to meetings of the Brodhull at New Romney.14 White and Black Bks. 20-33, 35-39. He was also selected by Rye at least three times to go to the autumn herring fairs at Yarmouth, as one of the bailiffs from the Ports. In 1448 Thomas Stoughton* was named as bailiff to Yarmouth, but was refused admittance at the Brodhull because he was then dwelling in London; Rye was to choose between Onewyn and two others for his replacement, but it is unlikely that Onewyn was the one chosen for he was requested to attend a special Brodhull in September that year, to help determine the disputes between Sandwich and Nicholas Aydlabye of Dover.15 Ibid. 21, 24, 25. Election to the Parliament summoned to meet on 12 Feb. 1449 followed not long afterwards, and he received payment of 31s. for attending the second session in the following May. Besides this, Rye paid him expenses of 10s. for riding to see the warden of the Ports, James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele. That summer and autumn he was kept busy on other tasks for the authorities at Rye: attending the Brodhull and a Guestling at Hastings, visiting Dover, accompanying the mayor to Winchelsea for guidance in Rye’s disputes with its member-Port of Tenterden, and late in the year making a journey to London.16 Rye mss, 60/2, ff. 5, 11.

Yet Onewyn and his fellow rulers of Rye were not always in accord. Towards the end of 1449 he had a violent altercation with another jurat, John Southyn, in the presence of the mayor and their colleagues, in which he went so far as to lay his hand on a weapon. In the following spring he rode again to London to have the charter regarding the liberties of Tenterden confirmed and registered in the Exchequer, and in that troubled summer of 1450 he attended a general Brodhull and temporarily took over the duties of the King’s bailiff of Rye.17 Ibid. ff. 10, 12v. Onewyn was elected to Parliament again in the autumn – an assembly summoned in the wake of Cade’s rebellion – and received 13s. 4d. in part payment of his stipend on 9 Mar. 1451, during the second session. Although he was still in London after the session ended (for on 6 Apr. a small sum of money was delivered to him there), he attended a Brodhull in May (when he probably reported to the delegates the proceedings of the Parliament), and on the instructions of the assembly he rode to visit the warden of the Ports, Humphrey, duke of Buckingham, regarding a suit in the court of Shepway. It was not until July that he received 34s. 10d. in part payment of his parliamentary wages, although he was paid a further 25s. subsequently. This worked out as nearly 2s. a day.18 Ibid. ff. 21v, 23, 24, 25.

It was at this point, in August 1451, that Onewyn was elected mayor of Rye, and he then held the post for three consecutive years. During his second term (1452-3) he made several journeys on behalf of the community, going to London, East Grinstead and, along with Babylon Grantford*, to Canterbury, this last being to witness the installation of Archbishop Kemp at the cathedral.19 Ibid. ff. 32, 32v. In the course of this mayoralty he was elected to the Parliament which assembled at Reading in March 1453 and was eventually dissolved in April 1454. For the Reading session he was paid for 28 days’ service at the rate of 1s. 6d. a day (amounting to 42s.), although for those at Westminster (29 and 37 days, respectively) he received only 1s. 4d. a day, amounting to £4 8s.20 Ibid. ff. 32, 33, 37. During the recesses of April and July 1453 he attended Brodhulls, where once more he no doubt recounted what had taken place in the Commons. After the start of the second session (25 Apr.) he was at Dover on the 27th serving on a jury at the inquiry held by the lieutenant of Dover castle regarding the claims made by Portsmen for exemption from the tax granted in the Parliament of 1445, while late that year he was at Winchelsea meeting the lieutenant warden and engrossing bonds between Rye and Tenterden.21 Ibid. f. 36v; E179/228/131. Onewyn was absent from the Commons at the end of the final session, for even though Parliament was not dissolved until 18 Apr. 1454, he was at a Brodhull which met nine days earlier. He was sent to Yarmouth again that autumn. His fourth and presumably last Parliament met in July 1455 and was dissolved in March 1456. For his services on this occasion he was paid for 31 days at the rate of 1s. 8d. a day; and he also received 20d. ‘for a bill for a proviso for Tenterden’. The ‘matter of Tenterden’ had taken him to Dover in the autumn, and he also rode to Canterbury for the installation of Archbishop Bourgchier.22 Rye mss, 60/2, ff. 42, 43, 44v, 48.

As had happened earlier, however, Onewyn’s violent temperament led to serious conflicts at home in this same period. First of all, he was required to find sureties in £100 that he would keep the peace to John Swan, one of his fellow jurats, and he was fined 2s. for two separate assaults on Swan, in which he drew his dagger. On 14 Mar. 1456, two days after Parliament was dissolved, he was bound over in £30 in the mayor’s court to keep the peace to his old adversary John Sutton and two of the latter’s kinsmen, although he had the support of other of the jurats who provided pledges for his good behaviour. Subsequently, he was fined again, for threatening Sutton’s putative son John†. There was yet more trouble when Onewyn was sent to the Yarmouth fair that autumn, although this time he was not directly to blame. William Stamer of Hastings, the master of a vessel used for coastal fishing, seized a ‘coggeship’ containing goods worth 2,000 marks belonging to merchants of Norwich and Bishop’s Lynn, claiming that they had failed to pay customs dues. In retaliation, Edmund Wydewell* and his fellow bailiff of the town of Great Yarmouth arrested the four bailiffs from the Ports (Onewyn, John Goldyng†, Robert Scras* and Richard Smallwood*). A special Brodhull, meeting on 14 Dec., ordered that Stamer and his crew be attached by the bailiff of Hastings and if it were found that they took the goods wrongfully they were to abide by the judgement of the Brodhull; but at the same time the barons started proceedings in Chancery regarding the wrongful imprisonment of their representatives, contrary to their liberties and franchises. The matter was still a bone of contention as late as May 1458, although another special Brodhull then decided that a letter should be sent to the merchants of Norwich and Lynn inviting them to come to Hastings to sue Stamer, now a prisoner, and recover such of their goods as could now be found in the liberty, provided that they ceased all legal processes against Onewyn. How long the latter had been held at Yarmouth is not clear, but he was certainly present at this Brodhull to make his case,23 Ibid. ff. 45, 46, 47v, 53; White and Black Bks. 37, 39; C1/26/566. and meanwhile he had continued in his active role on the business of Rye, as the Port’s negotiator and spokesman.24 Rye mss, 60/2, ff. 58v, 59.

Nevertheless, his troubles were by no means over. On 23 Mar. 1459 the warden, the duke of Buckingham, sent orders to the mayor and bailiff of Rye to bring him to Dover on 8 Apr. to answer what should be laid against him by the Crown, on pain of £200.25 Ibid. f. 109v. Perhaps fearful that his property might be confiscated, he now put some of his land in the hands of a new body of feoffees (three of those he had originally nominated, including Roger atte Gate and William Catton*, had died long before), and made sure the seal of the Port of Rye was appended to the deed to give it extra authority.26 Cat. Rye Recs. deeds 122/13, 15. Furthermore, a few weeks later, on 3 June, he placed his goods and chattels in the possession of four men, headed by Richard Dallingridge* esquire, the wealthy owner of Bodiam castle. It seems that he had need of an influential patron.27 Ibid. 136/197. Two more violent incidents at Rye followed, leading to the irascible Onewyn being fined for spilling blood.28 Rye mss, 60/2, ff. 70, 83. Surprisingly, he continued to be acceptable as a jurat, and was re-elected as such on 30 Aug. 1461,29 Ibid. f. 89v. only to die within the next nine months. Since he had failed to make a will, on 1 July 1462 his widow was empowered to administer his estate.30 Cat. Rye Recs. deed 137/19. Although it is known that Onewyn left a son and heir named Thomas, nothing is recorded about him.31 Ibid. 136/199.