POYNTZ, John

Like their Gloucestershire namesakes, the Poyntz family of North Ockenden were a cadet branch of the Lords Poyntz, one-time holders of a barony that had become extinct in the mid fourteenth century.2 The MP must be distinguished from his distant kinsman and namesake, the son of Nicholas Poyntz*, with whom he is confused and conflated in HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 698. A third John ‘Poynes’, a household servant of the duke of Norfolk and probably a member of the Poynings family, accompanied Margaret of York to Burgundy for her wedding. There, he and one William Alsford were said to have had treasonable correspondence with the duke of Somerset, and as a result they were arrested on their return and executed on Tower Hill in Nov. 1468: Gt. Chron. London ed. Thomas and Thornley, 207, 430; Plumpton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. iv), 18-20; Plumpton Letters (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, viii), no. 16; C1/32/345; T. Sprott, Chrons. ed. Hearne, 296; C. Ross, Edw. IV, 122-3. In the final decade of Richard II’s reign John’s probable grandfather, Poyntz Poyntz, had acquired the manor of North Ockenden in the right of his wife, Eleanor, the grand-daughter and ultimate heiress of the estate’s former lord, William, son of Baldwin.3 VCH Essex, vii. 111. By 1412, John Poyntz’s father and namesake had inherited the family lands, said in his lifetime to be worth more than £30 p.a., and as an established member of county society had attested the Essex parliamentary elections of 1413 (May), 1420, 1422 and 1435.4 E179/240/267; Feudal Aids, vi. 444; C219/11/1; 12/4; 13/1; 14/5. The identity of the younger John’s mother has not been discovered, but she was probably his father’s first wife, rather than his second – Beatrice, the widow of Robert Hotoft of Knebworth (and mother of John Hotoft*), whom he had married by the summer of 1428.5 The elder John Poyntz was among the Essex gentry required to take the general oath against maintenance in 1434. Through his marriage to Beatrice Hotoft he acquired landholdings in Braughing , Herts., which reverted to the Hotofts at her death: CPR, 1429-36, p. 401; CCR, 1422-9, p. 384.

It is not clear whether it was the MP or his father who was present at the Essex elections of 24 Jan. 1447, for the elder John Poyntz made his will just two months later, and was dead by early May.6 Reg. Stafford, f. 149v. Certainly, in the light of the father’s probably already damaged health, it seems likely that it was the son who sat in the Bury St. Edmunds Parliament for the city of Exeter. It is uncertain how an Essex gentleman came to represent the south-western city, the merchant elite of which normally insisted on being represented by two of their own number, but it is possible that Poyntz owed his seat to the initiative of Exeter’s other representative, Richard Druell*. Both the indenture drawn up by the sheriff of Devon (which recorded the names of those elected for the county and its boroughs), and the accompanying schedule show signs of having been tampered with. In each case, Poyntz’s name was inserted later over an erasure of a much longer name, possibly that of the serving mayor of Exeter, John Shillingford*. Shillingford was at this time in London, kept busy by the great lawsuit between his city and the dean and chapter of Exeter cathedral, and it was perhaps left to Druell, who also deputized for the mayor in other matters, to find a suitable replacement locally.7 C219/15/4. Poyntz’s own reasons for wishing to sit in the Commons at this time are obscure.

Poyntz’s standing in Essex society is illustrated by his regular appointments as a feoffee to one or other of his prominent neighbours, including members of the Tyrell family.8 C148/43; E159/229, commissiones Mich.; CCR, 1468-76, nos. 38, 335; CPR, 1446-52, p. 529. He never embarked on an extensive career of office-holding under the Crown, but was appointed to a local commission in the autumn of 1452, and attested the county elections of 1467.9 C219/17/1. Occasionally, his feoffeeships could lead to litigation in the Westminster law courts, such as that brought towards the end of the 1460s by Margaret, widow of Sir Thomas Fleming, against the feoffees of Robert Wade.10 C1/38/17-18; C4/2/92.

Poyntz made his will on 15 Apr. 1469, and was dead by the following 20 Feb., when probate was granted. He asked to be buried at the altar end of the Lady chapel at North Ockenden, before the image of St. Etheldreda, and left ten marks towards the rebuilding of the steeple of the church, as well as 6s. 8d. for the glazing of its west window. His tomb was to be covered with a stone costing 26s. 8d., and a priest was to sing for him and his parents for a year after his death. The testator’s widow, Maud, was to have use of their principal dwelling house at North Ockenden for a period of seven years after his death, and then to receive the customary third of all his lands in dower. In addition, she was to have all his money and jewels and the livestock, grain and other movables found in the manorial estate. Poyntz’s son and heir, Thomas, was to receive an annuity of six marks during his mother’s tenure of North Ockenden, and subsequently was to inherit all his father’s lands there and in Dunton and East Thorndon, as well as receiving a selection of garments and household goods. His younger brother William was granted the Kentish manor of East Wickham for his lifetime, while their three sisters were each to have 40 marks for their marriages. Poyntz’s executors, who included his wife and the London fishmonger William Turk, were each to have 26s. 8d. for their efforts.11 PCC 29 Godyn.

Thomas Poyntz died before 1481, and the family property then passed in its entirety to his younger brother, William, who married a sister of the prominent London goldsmith Sir Edmund Shaa.12 Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiv), 268-9; VCH Essex, vii. 111.