JANYN, James, of Ewell and Croydon, Surr.

It may be presumed that James was related to John* and Bernard Janyn*, although firm evidence is lacking. Like John, at the start of his career he held land at Ewell, and it is of interest to note that they sat together in the Parliaments of 1433 and 1435, albeit for different constituencies.

Although sometimes styled ‘yeoman’ or ‘husbandman’, James appears to have been principally engaged as a bailiff or business agent for local landowners, and early in his career he was employed as ‘King’s bailiff’ in Surrey. An indictment presented at sessions held at Guildford in January 1420 alleged that the previous Michaelmas when, on the instructions of the sheriff, James had gone to Ewell to make replevin of a certain horse, Elizabeth, wife of Robert Leversegge, and others had assaulted him and rescued the horse, and that she had cried with a loud voice ‘interficite eum et omnes eum auxiliantes’, so that James and John Janyn (then present as constable of Ewell), had feared for their lives. Nevertheless, the defendants were acquitted. KB27/635, rex rot. 9. In Michaelmas term 1422 James was sued by John Dymmock for failing to render account as his bailiff and receiver in Wallington and elsewhere, and the Sussex lawyer John Bolney brought an action against him for a debt of ten marks. It was as a ‘bailly’ that he appeared in the records of the common pleas in 1427. CP40/647, rots. 12, 26; 657, rot. 158; 667, rot. 582d. Dymmock continued to pursue him in the law-courts until 1435 or later: CP40/698, rot. 278. Janyn’s defence in a lawsuit of the early 1440s was that the writ incorrectly gave his address as Croydon, whereas in fact he lived at Ewell. CP40/731, rot. 119. Even so, Croydon does appear to have been his principal place of residence. There is no definite evidence to connect him with the Sussex borough of East Grinstead, which he represented in three consecutive Parliaments of the 1430s. It may be, however, that he held an official position in the neighbourhood, such as the role he was to play as bailiff of the liberties of the bishop of Chichester.

Despite these links with Sussex, it was as one of the men of Surrey that Janyn took the general oath against law-breakers in 1434. CPR, 1429-36, p. 381. In a mark of his local standing he headed the list of jurors at Croydon who, on 20 Sept. 1435, provided information at a royal inquiry into the possessions of John, earl of Arundel, who had died in France three months earlier. E159/212, recorda Mich. rot. 20. He and John Janyn were both subject to suits brought by the wealthy Sussex landowner Sir Roger Fiennes*: in his case being sued later in 1435 for a debt of ten marks. CP40/699, rot. 270. At that time his fourth Parliament was in progress, in which he represented the borough of Bletchingley, not far from his home. Similarly, his prominence in that part of Surrey probably also lay behind his selection as an MP for Reigate two years later, this being his fifth Parliament in a row. Janyn’s election for Horsham in 1442 represented a renewal of his links with Sussex, and may suggest an involvement with the administration of the estates of John Mowbray, duke of Norfolk, which included both Reigate and Horsham. However, this is to speculate.

Few details of Janyn’s landholdings survive, but he held some of his property in Croydon jointly with his first wife, and in 1445 he brought an action against John Rychard of Southwark ‘upholdester’ and his wife for breaking into his house there 13 years earlier and taking goods including silver plate worth £10. He also accused Rychard of illegally detaining ten marks, a sum noted as arrears in Rychard’s accounts as his receiver. CP40/738, rots. 357, 378. In 1446 Janyn sold a small strip of wasteland by the road from Croydon to Addiscombe which he had himself purchased from the lord of the manor of Croydon, the archbishop of Canterbury. Abstracts Muns. Whitgift Foundation, Croydon ed. Paget, 14. Subsequently, the executors of the former archbishop, Henry Chichele, alleged that Janyn owed £11 to Chichele’s estate, a debt which they were still attempting to recover in 1452. CP40/765, rot. 401. It was while resident at Croydon that Janyn was involved in a dispute with John Burstowe, who alleged in a petition to Chancery that he had reneged on an obligation which required him to represent Burstowe, when sick, at a meeting held in Windsor for the purpose of resolving a dispute. Instead Burstowe had been arrested and sent to the Marshalsea prison after Janyn and his accomplice had claimed that the £40 bond was forfeit. C1/10/33. Together with his second wife Janyn held lands in Wallington and Carshalton, of which they relinquished possession in the autumn of 1456. CP25(1)/232/74/24.

At the time of Cade’s rebellion in the summer of 1450 Janyn had been holding office as constable of the hundred of Wallington, and it was probably the tenure of this post which prompted him to take out a royal pardon. CPR, 1446-52, p. 366. As ‘of Croydon, gentleman’ he was later summoned to the common pleas to answer the esquires William Venour (the warden of the Fleet prison) and William Fitzwater for a debt of £8, half this sum being due on an obligation he had entered into in July 1452, the rest being rent for certain lands in Croydon which the two men had leased to him. Janyn, appearing in court in Easter term 1456, disputed the terms of the obligation, saying that he was ‘minime literatus’ and had only put his seal to it on the understanding that it contained the conditions read out to him in English. As for the rent, he said he had paid it. CP40/781, rot. 329. That he retained connexions of importance in Surrey is clear from his appearance later that year, on 14 Nov., as a witness to the will made by the wealthy Nicholas Carew* of Beddington. PCC 12 Stokton (PROB11/4, ff. 93v-95v). Early in 1457 Janyn sued a husbandman of Lambeth for a debt of £20, and in October that year he entered a bond in five marks to William Lightwood, a London draper. He failed to pay on the appointed day the following Christmas, eventually forcing Lightwood to take legal action against his widow and executrix Denise and her new husband, Walter Peres, in order to recover the debt. Janyn died at an unknown date before the summer of 1468. CP40/784, rot. 201; 828, rot. 115d.