STEYNOUR, William

It has been posited that the MP for Dorchester was William Steynour of Riseley in Bedfordshire, a yeoman named among the malefactors who slew William Tresham* the former Speaker at ‘Thorplandclose’ in Northamptonshire on 23 Sept. 1450 when Tresham was on his way to meet the duke of York.1 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 808-9. Tresham’s widow, appealing to the Parliament which met shortly afterwards on 6 Nov., claimed that the murderers mainly came from Wales and Northamptonshire,2 PROME, xii. 175-9. their attack being master-minded by Simon Norwich, the common-law heir of the Holts, whom Tresham had kept out of that family’s valuable estates. According to the chronicle attributed to William Worcestre, followers of Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin, were behind the killing;3 Letters and Pprs. Illust. Wars of English ed. Stevenson, ii (2), [769]. and there is evidence to link both Norwich and Steynour to that nobleman. None of the assailants were brought to justice, and Steynour of Riseley secured a royal pardon on 20 June 1452, when an alternative address for him was given as Yardley in Northamptonshire.4 C67/40, m. 28. In May 1458 he was appointed with Lord Grey and William Herteshorn* to a commission of arrest.5 CPR, 1452-61, p. 441.

It is, however, difficult to support this assertion, especially as there is nothing to connect Lord Grey with Dorchester, or to suggest that beyond his home territory he openly promoted his followers as MPs in the Parliament of 1453. Although no local man named William Steynour has been found, the records of Dorchester are deficient for this period of Henry VI’s reign, so we cannot be certain that the MP was not one of the burgesses. It may be pertinent that a widow called Alice Steynour or Dorsett, made a conveyance of a burgage on the north side of Durnelane in Dorchester in September 1467.6 Dorchester Recs. ed. Mayo, 293.