WYLNE, Robert

Wylne came from a family of yeomen established at Melbourne, a few miles to the south of Derby on the border between Leicestershire and Derbyshire. In the subsidy returns of 1431 his putative father, William Wylne of Melbourne, described as a yeoman, was returned as holding a free tenement in Normanton on the outskirts of Derby. This partly explains and justifies Robert’s later connexion with the borough and suggests that he was a descendant of Gervase Wylne†, MP for Derby on several occasions in the first decade of the fourteenth century.5 Feudal Aids, i. 296. Robert, however, was no townsman. By the summer of 1433 he had found a place in the royal household for, on 29 July, he was described as a yeoman of the royal chamber in the grant to him of the bailiwick of the New Liberty of the duchy of Lancaster in Derbyshire. He may have owed his place about the King to the patronage of his neighbour Thomas Staunton† of Sutton Bonington (Nottinghamshire): the castle at Melbourne was the property of the duchy and, from 1418, Staunton had been constable there before being succeeded by his son and heir, another Thomas*, in 1437.6 Somerville, i. 549, 557-8. However this may be, the Wylnes were certainly well connected for, in the winter of 1438-9, John Wylne, who was probably our MP’s brother, was elected prior of the house of Austin canons at Repton, a few miles to the west of the family home at Melbourne.7 CPR, 1436-41, p. 228. In 1448 Prior Wylne was employed as an attorney by John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk: Derbys. Chs. ed. Jeayes, 489-90.

During the late 1430s and 1440s Robert made significant gains from royal patronage. On 8 Mar. 1437 as a yeoman of the Crown he was granted 6d. a day assigned on the issues of the shrievalty of Oxfordshire and Berkshire; at the end of the year he was appointed to the duchy parkership of Stockley with its wages of 1d. a day; and in the autumn of 1438 he joined Edmund Archer in the parkership of Castle Donington (near Melbourne) in Leicestershire. This last grant is another indication of a connexion with the Stauntons for the younger Thomas was soon to be appointed constable there.8 CPR, 1436-41, pp. 44, 136; DL42/18, ff. 96v-97, 112v. Later, on 13 June 1444, Wylne and a fellow yeoman of the Crown, John Sutton, leased from the duchy herbage and pannage in Leicester Frith for 21 years at an annual rent of as much as £11; in the following February his son John joined him in his office of bailiff of the New Liberty; and in June 1446 he further extended his Leicestershire concerns by taking a lease of the herbage, pannage and agistment in the park of Castle Donington for 16 years at 43s. 4d. p.a.9 DL37/53/26, 49; Somerville, i. 549. These interests brought him into conflict with two prominent burgesses of Leicester, Adam Racy* and Alexander Vyllers, whom, in Trin. term 1446, he sued for assaulting him at Bird’s Nest in the forest of Leicester: CP40/742, rot. 292.

Wylne’s duties in the royal household kept him often away from his native shire not only when required in the King’s presence but on miscellaneous administrative tasks. For example, on 13 Nov. 1448 he found himself at St. Mary’s church in Nottingham on royal business: with the lawyer Thomas Chaterley*, another Derby MP, he questioned an executor of a canon of Southwell concerning a bequest. On the following 17 Feb. he was at St. Bride’s in Fleet Street, London, to take an oath regarding the same matter. His appointment in June 1452 to secure the appearance of a Norfolk chapman before the royal council is similarly to be seen as an aspect of his Household service.10 CCR, 1447-54, p. 125; CPR, 1446-52, p. 552. In a less direct way, his return, in company with Thomas Blount*, to represent Derby in the Parliament of 1453 is to be seen in the same context. This marked a continuation of a recent break in the pattern of the borough’s representation, a break only partly disguised by Wylne’s tenuous connexion with the borough. Until the late 1440s its MPs had been drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of the resident burgesses but on this occasion both of those returned were Household men.11 C219/16/2 (the return is dated two days after the Parl. was scheduled to assemble).

In the wake of the confiscations which followed the rout of the Yorkists at Ludford Bridge, Wylne received the most substantial mark of royal favour that was to come his way: on 12 Feb. 1460 he was granted for life the office of keeper of the park of Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire, forfeited by Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury. By this date he had been promoted within the ranks of the Household for he was then one of the gentlemen ushers of the Chamber.12 CPR, 1452-61, p. 546. Soon after, however, the Yorkist victory at Northampton brought his career in royal service to an abrupt end, and he lost his place in the Household and his office in the duchy of Lancaster. It may be that he only narrowly escaped much more damaging consequences. On 19 Dec. 1461, at the end of the first session of Edward IV’s first Parliament, he sued out a general pardon which he took the precaution of having enrolled on the patent roll. This suggests that he had been a candidate for inclusion in the bill of attainder passed during that session, and that the securing of the pardon marked the end of that danger.13 CPR, 1461-7, p. 84. Enrolled with his pardon under the same date is one for his putative brother, Prior John Wylne. Wylne’s loss of position strongly suggests that, if the family had a patron among the leading men of his native county, it was not the Blounts, the committed Yorkists who had a residence at Elvaston, a few miles from Melbourne.

Very little can be discovered about the last years of Wylne’s life, which he presumably lived out quietly in retirement at Melbourne. On 29 May 1469, described as an esquire, he witnessed a deed at King’s Newton near his home, and on 20 Jan. 1472 he again sued out a general pardon.14 Derbys. RO, Fox mss, D303/1/15; C67/48, m. 10. If this was insurance against support for the Readeption, that support has left no trace on the records. Later the family recovered its place among the minor local officers of the duchy of Lancaster, for in the early 1490s John Wylne was serving as approver of the hundred of Gresley in south Derbyshire. Interestingly, this John married one of the coheiresses of the Stauntons of Sutton Bonington in a continuation of a relationship between the two families established in our MP’s time.15 Somerville, i. 559n.; R. Thoroton, Notts. ed. Throsby, i. 17; Derbys. Feet of Fines (Derbys. Rec. Soc. xi), 1190-1.