RASYN, Hugh

Rasyn first appears in the records in a rental of 1414, owing the rent of 12d. to Scarborough’s church of St. Mary. In the surviving tithe accounts for the same church he is recorded as paying a tithe of 20s., as resident ‘supra clivum’ (that is, in the Upper Cliff, the part of the town around the church) in each year from 1414 to 1418.2 E101/514/31, ff. 9v, 25, 37v, 43, 54v. So high a payment suggests that he was one of the town’s wealthiest residents, and it is not surprising that he should have been chosen as bailiff in Michaelmas term 1421. In a practice common in the town, he was elected to Parliament while in office.3 C219/13/1. He was alive in 1424, when he had an action for a debt of 73s. pending in the court of common pleas against a London fishmonger, but he was dead by 31 Mar. 1427, when his widow drew up a will. That will mentions no children, is notable for the paucity of its bequests and says nothing directly about the testator’s family. It may be, however, that she came from Seamer, a few miles to the south of Scarborough, for she named the vicar there as one of the supervisors of her will; and that she was either the widow or daughter of one John Manby, for it was next to his tomb in the cemetery of Scarborough’s church of St. Mary that she wanted to be buried.4 CP40/652, rot. 271; Borthwick Inst. Univ. of York, York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 516. A later will shows that our MP had been buried in the church itself. In 1457 one of the leading burgesses, Robert Wardale*, directed burial in the church near Rasyn, whom he described, interestingly, as formerly master of the town’s grammar school. It was rare but not unknown for a layman to hold such a position, and it may be that Rasyn had been responsible for the testator’s education. Additionally or alternately, however, Wardale may have been remembering a benefactor in a more material sense. His chief messuage was called ‘Schoolmaster’s place’ and it may have come to him from Rasyn, who was, perhaps, his father-in-law.5 York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 356.