PAYN, William

The name of Payn was a common one in fifteenth-century England, but there appears to be little doubt that the man who represented Taunton in the Parliament of 1427 was local to the borough that returned him. He served as one of the bishop of Winchester’s portreeves of the town in 1416-17 and 1418-19, and between 1409 and 1425 frequently formed part of the delegation of the burgesses dispatched to the shire court to report their choice of parliamentary representatives to the sheriff.2 Ibid.; C219/10/5; 12/5, 6; 13/1, 3. In 1421 and 1422 he was appointed a tax collector in the county, but otherwise held no office under the Crown, although he did periodically serve on local juries, including that empanelled for the inquisition post mortem of John Arundell* of Bideford.3 CFR, xiv. 416; xv. 6; CIPM, xxii. 248, 292.

In 1397 Payn had been named one of the feoffees of four houses in Taunton which Robert Bathe† settled on the fraternity of the Holy Cross in the parish church of St. Mary Magdalen. It was not until 30 years later, in 1427, that an inquiry found that Bathe had failed to obtain the royal licence necessary to alienate the property in mortmain. The houses were consequently taken into the King’s hands and farmed to Sir Thomas Brooke* and John Stourton I*. The surviving feoffees sought to defend the fraternity’s title, and it is possible that it was to this end that Payn secured election to the Parliament which assembled at Westminster in October. If the matter was ever considered by the Lords or Commons, no record of their deliberations has survived, and in 1429 the fraternity’s feoffees eventually gained redress from the chancellor.4 C44/26/16; E159/206, brevia Mich. rot. 39; The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 682.