Thomas was a member of the most famous Bristol family of the later Middle Ages. His father, John, was one of the town’s principal property owners, and had added to the family’s fortunes though his trading ventures to southern Europe and to the Low Countries. His early death in 1405 left all six of his children still under age (with Thomas being aged about eight), and his widow pregnant with their last child. In the circumstances it was decided that the children should be split up, with Joan retaining only the guardianship of Thomas’s younger brother, William, and his sister Agnes. The remaining siblings were placed in the care of close friends, with the guardianship of Thomas, and his sisters Joan and Margaret, awarded to Margaret, widow of Thomas Beaupyne†. This arrangement lasted until 1408, by which time Canynges’s mother had taken as her second husband Thomas Young†. Young then assumed custody of Thomas and his three surviving siblings, each of whom was allocated a share of their father’s goods and chattels, worth a total of just under £300. The two Canynges brothers therefore spent the remainder of their childhood in the household of their mother and stepfather, and, in due course, they were joined by half-brothers, John and Thomas Young. The close relationship between the Canynges and Young children was thus forged at an early stage: all four men rose to prominence at about the same time, and to varying degrees all four came to be associated with the growing opposition to Henry VI’s government during the 1450s and with the new Yorkist regime.
While William Canynges remained in Bristol, where he served as mayor on five occasions and was chosen three times as an MP, both Thomas and his half-brother John Young made their careers in London. Nothing is recorded of Thomas in the capital until 1422 when he acted as an arbiter in a dispute involving the grocer Nicholas Wyfold.
Canynges’s prominence within the Grocers’ Company was bolstered by his trading activities, which in his case appear to have centred upon the export trade in cloth. Thus, early in 1433 he took a single shipment containing 82 short cloths to the continent through the port of London. His absence from subsequent customs accounts for that port can partly be explained by the fact that he was shipping a good deal of merchandise through Southampton. On 10 Mar. 1438 he exported 132 cloths on a carrack, and on 1 July took another 130 cloths through the port. Similar quantities were listed against his name ten years later. Not all his shipments went according to plan, however, for in the autumn of 1439 he brought a suit against a Southampton cooper over the carriage of 120 woollen cloths. Canynges claimed the sum of £40 for the failure of the cooper to transport the cloth safely.
Like many merchants Canynges undertook much of his trade in partnership with others. By the late 1430s he had gone into partnership with a prominent London mercer, William Melreth*, for the purpose of taking merchandise across the North Sea to Zeeland. In May 1437 they obtained a royal licence enabling them to dispatch a ship called Le Marie, whose master was Walter Fryse, to Arnemuiden, and to man and arm three other vessels, a barge and a balinger. The Crown’s interest in this was plain, for under the terms of the licence Canynges and Melreth were to patrol the seas there for a month after their arrival, in return for keeping a share of any goods seized from enemy ships. The licence was also made conditional on them not importing any goods from Flanders.
By this time more serious matters had come to occupy the minds of Canynges and a number of other London merchants, who found themselves on the receiving end of a series of malicious allegations concerning their mercantile activities. The instigator of these was Thomas Brown II*, an Exchequer official who was probably the son of a London grocer and had himself been admitted as a member of the Company in the mid 1430s. In April 1437 Brown and Canynges had been associated together when an alien merchant, Baldwin Sanheuy, made a formal release of all legal actions to them and others, including the treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. By this time, however, Brown had become a thorn in the side of many London merchants, principally because of the frequency with which he was able to obtain favourable royal licences enabling him to further his own business ventures. When, in late 1437 and early 1438, Brown was appointed to commissions charged with inquiring into customs evasions in Kent, he took the opportunity to move against some of his rivals. Those accused included Melreth and William Cottesbroke*, but also Canynges and his half-brother, John Young, who had gone into business together shortly after the latter’s arrival in London. On 19 Feb. 1438 it was found by an inquisition taken at Sittingbourne that the previous 15 July Canynges and Young had exported 200 woollen cloths and tin worth 400 marks from Queenborough to Zeeland on Walter Fryse’s ship without paying customs. Canynges admitted taking the goods on board, but claimed that he had paid customs in London, and Young not only denied his guilt but claimed that the inquiries had been heard before their enemies and ill-wishers. Eventually, in October 1439, Canynges and Young, like their fellow accused, obtained a royal pardon in respect of these charges.
As well as sending goods to northern Europe, Canynges was also concerned in trading ventures to the Italian cities and states. In October 1445 he, along with William Estfield* and Richard Quatermayns* were the recipients of a deed of gift made by Stephen Forster* of a large quantity of merchandise that Forster had imported from Venice and stored in a warehouse in the parish of St. George Eastcheap. The goods included luxury goods such as silks, gold brocade and tartarin, as well as spices such as cloves, ginger and pepper and sweet wine from Greece.
The successful business ventures of merchants such as Canynges and his fellow grocers like Richard Lee*, put them in a powerful position when it came to lending money to others. A popular device was the ‘gift’ of goods and chattels which was made both to relieve debts but most often as a means of enabling younger merchants to obtain credit. Canynges was a recipient of such gifts on numerous occasions, indicating that he was active in providing finance to his fellow Londoners. Many were fellow grocers, but his ‘customers’ also included fishmongers, tailors and mercers.
The pattern of debts owed to Canynges, many of which were never satisfied, suggests that he maintained close links with Bristol and its region. In the early 1430s, for example, he was owed £33 16s. 8d. by William Bythewater, a Bristol merchant, who subsequently obtained a royal pardon after being outlawed for failing to appear in court. On a number of occasions in the 1450s his debtors included clothworkers from Somerset, which suggests that he was financing their businesses in some way. His provincial contacts were in general extremely broad, however. He was at the Lincoln staple in 1440 in pursuit of a debt, and he was owed sums of money by individuals from Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and York.
Canynges had inherited one third of his father’s holdings in Bristol which, at the time of the latter’s death, had comprised 22 shops, six tenements, three halls and five gardens, while outside the town he held a reversionary interest in a house in ‘Netherwer’ in Somerset. A rental compiled by the Bristol authorities in the early 1460s showed that Canynges held land in St. Thomas’s Street, for which he paid a nominal rent to the commonalty. By 1436 his holdings in Bristol and elsewhere in Gloucestershire were said to be worth £20 p.a.
There is evidence to show that Canynges’s business dealings in East Anglia resulted in the acquisition of a certain amount of property at a distance from the capital. Following his death, his son William petitioned Chancery concerning the repeated attempts by one Thomas Bagger of Hadleigh in Suffolk forcibly to enter Canynges’s holdings there, which included a messuage and some 200 acres of land, resulting in the loss of goods, jewels and documents.
Like most wealthy London merchants, Canynges at various times was drawn into financial dealings with the Crown, although in his case these were on a fairly limited scale. At some point before March 1448 he lent the government the sum of £300 which was repaid through a licence enabling him to export woollen cloth; and in late July 1453 the Exchequer authorized the repayment by assignment of another loan, of 200 marks, which he had advanced earlier that month.
Nor do these vague links with the administration go far to illuminate Canynges’s political stance in the 1440s and 1450s. More is perhaps revealed from his involvement in the city politics. Although active in London from the early 1420s it was not until 1434 that Canynges was first appointed to an office in the city, that of collector of a parliamentary subsidy. Over the next few years he was appointed to a variety of city committees, a valuable way of gaining experience of London’s government prior to attaining higher office. In December 1439 he was chosen as one of the receivers of a £1,000 loan which London made to the Crown, while in November 1441, no doubt because of his business dealings, he was appointed to a committee established to look at the status of alien merchants in the capital.
Canynges’s standing in the city meant that he was more than able to withstand such slights to his character. On 19 Oct. 1445 he was narrowly chosen as alderman for the ward of Aldgate, defeating the mercer Geoffrey Feldyng* by nine votes to eight, and the following year he was chosen as one of the city’s four auditors. Meanwhile, in July 1446, he and his wife Elizabeth obtained a royal pardon, and it is possible that he was again having to defend himself against malicious allegations.
By the end of the 1440s the Canynges and Young brothers occupied prominent positions in London and Bristol. Moreover, William Canynges and John Young had both established a connexion with the duke of York, for in 1448-9 they acted on the latter’s behalf in relation to a mortgage of property at Easton in Gloucestershire, property in which Thomas Young, an associate of the duke’s chamberlain, William Oldhall*, was to acquire a life interest. It was also in 1448 that Thomas Young first began acting as learned counsel for the Grocers’ Company, at a time when Thomas Canynges was coming towards the end of his first term as governor. Yet it is clear that despite being related to men with clear Yorkist connexions, Thomas himself does not appear to have forged any direct links with the duke or his circle during the late 1440s. His election as sheriff of London and Middlesex in the autumn of 1449 may not, therefore, have had any wider political significance, despite the growing prominence within the Grocers’ Company of elements which were increasingly disillusioned with the Lancastrian government.
In the meantime the Parliament of 1450 had been the scene of high drama when Thomas Young put forward a Commons’ motion for York to be adopted as Henry VI’s rightful heir. This must have this left the Canynges brothers and John Young feeling somewhat exposed, especially after Thomas was imprisoned. It is possible that John Young’s failure to become an alderman later that year was a calculated move by the court of aldermen in London to avoid attracting unwanted attention.
In view of these events, Canynges’s election as an MP to the Parliament of 1459, which had been summoned specifically for the attainder of the Yorkist lords, is difficult to explain. Shortly before the assembly met at Coventry the city government was concerned enough about how London was viewed to send a delegation to the King to assure him of its support. Canynges’s three fellow Members were all prominent citizens, but unlike him they were not tainted by association, however distant, with pro-Yorkist interests. The election of Canynges could therefore either be an indication of the independence of mind of London’s government, or else a reflection of the fact that Canynges was not himself regarded as a potential liability.
It seems that he may genuinely have been ailing, for by the summer of 1463 he was dead. His will does not survive, but he did evidently draft such a document, appointing as his executors his widow Elizabeth and his brother William.