SKYRES, Reynold

The election of Skyres and John Kennington* as the MPs for Oxford in 1459 is perhaps best explained by the turbulent political circumstances of the time, since the Town’s more established burgesses were perhaps reluctant to stand for Parliament as the country was sliding towards civil war. Although scarcely less obscure than his fellow MP, Skyres was a man of some status in so far as he was styled as ‘of Oxfordshire, gentleman’ in a royal pardon he received in the autumn of 1455.1 C67/41, m. 19 (20 Oct.). It is possible that he was a lawyer since there is no evidence that he was a landowner of any significance. In Oxford itself, he briefly leased a couple of tenements in the parish of All Saints in the later 1450s. His landlord was the abbot of Osney, to whom he paid a total annual rent of 60s. while he held the properties.2 Cart. Oseney Abbey, iii (Oxf. Historical Soc. xci), 260. Both were in the hands of his predecessors as tenants until 1455 and he no longer held them at Mich. 1461.

On several occasions during the later 1450s and early 1460s, Skyres acted as a surety in the university chancellor’s court at Oxford. He also appeared in the same court on his own account in the spring of 1458, in connexion with a dispute between him and John Joyne. He and his sureties, the aldermen William Dagvile* and John Swetlove, undertook that he would keep the peace towards Joyne until the following Whitsun, and Dagvile and Swetlove further pledged that he would reappear in court if he and Joyne did not settle their differences before then. Presumably, Joyne was a member of the university, for Skyres also swore an oath that he would not attempt to remove the matter to another court, so acknowledging the chancellor’s right to hear pleas involving scholars or others attached to the university. It is not known what had caused the quarrel and the dispute was probably resolved by arbitration since there is no further record of it. Skyres probably died or moved away from Oxford within a few years of sitting in Parliament, because he is not heard of after March 1462.3 Registrum Cancellarii Oxoniensis, i (Oxf. Historical Soc. xciii), 389, 396-7; ii (ibid. xciv), 61-62, 71-72, 78.