LYNBY, Henry, of Watford, Herts.

The name of this MP was written over an erasure on the schedule listing those returned for the Wiltshire boroughs in 1433. C219/14/4. There is no record of a local man called Henry Lynby, which adds weight to the identification of the MP with a contemporary clerk of the Exchequer. The clerk originally came from Nottinghamshire, where his family perhaps derived its name from Linby in Sherwood Forest.

Lynby, called ‘of Nottinghamshire’ made appearances in the Exchequer in Henry V’s reign as a mainpernor for lessees of Crown property, on occasion acting for fellow clerks in the same government department. CFR, xiv. 89, 232, 261, 369, 385. At least from 1415 he was also active as an attorney in the Exchequer of pleas, taking on briefs for men from his home county, but also being increasingly employed by others from elsewhere, including Hertfordshire, E13/130, rot. 24d; 133, rot. 16; 134, rots. 6, 7; 135, rot. 15. especially after he moved to Watford in that county in the early 1420s. However, he soon fell out with another newcomer to Hertfordshire (albeit one of longer standing), the wealthy merchant William Flete* of Ricksmansworth. He was to allege in the King’s bench at Michaelmas term 1429 that Flete, abetted by four lesser men of St. Albans, Watford and Ricksmansworth, had assaulted and maltreated him at St. Albans on 17 July that year, and demanded from them a massive £1,000 in damages. The ‘wronges and oppressions’ done by Flete, including the assault on Lynby, were also cited in a petition to the chancellor, stating that as Flete was a j.p. these criminal activities could not be redressed by normal process of the common law. KB27/674, rots. 115, 165; C1/20/157. Yet Lynby cannot have been too badly injured, for he was capable of attending the election of the knights of the shire at Hertford just a few weeks afterwards, on 18 Aug. C219/14/1. He was probably acquainted with the men elected, for John Kirkby I* was marshal of the Exchequer and he his fellow MP John Barley* were well known to John Fray†, one of the barons.

It was as ‘of Hertfordshire, gentleman’ that Lynby was again a mainpernor in the Exchequer on 23 May 1433, CFR, xvi. 149. not long before Parliament assembled on 8 July. The Wiltshire indenture was dated 16 June, but precisely when and why Lynby’s name was substituted for the first choice of the inhabitants of Great Bedwyn has not been discovered; nor indeed is it known whether the substitution was made at the shire court at Wilton or not until the return reached Westminster. It is of interest to note that Lynby’s alleged assailant Flete was also a Member of the Commons (as a shire-knight for Hertfordshire), but if the two men continued their quarrel in the law courts while the Parliament was in progress, further evidence of it has yet to be found.

Through marriage Lynby had acquired property in the London parish of St. Mary Colechurch, where his wife was entitled to dower as the widow of John Carbonell. However, in accordance with the wishes of her late husband’s family, the Lynbys relinquished her share of the estate to the Goldsmiths’ Company. London hr 126/111-12; 127/1, 8. The marriage brought Lynby into the sphere of other Londoners, and led to his involvement in their business affairs. In January 1434, shortly after the dissolution of his Parliament, he was associated with the alderman William Estfield* as a recipient of the goods and chattels of a member of Estfield’s Company, the Mercers. A few months later he was appointed along with another Exchequer clerk as an attorney to deliver to prominent Londoners including Henry Barton† and John Carpenter II* (the common clerk of the city), seisin of lands in Watford, Rickmansworth and elsewhere. Links with the staff of the Exchequer account for his appearance as witness to a deed in 1435 along with John Hotoft*, the chamberlain of the receipt, and the baron John Fray. CCR, 1429-35, pp. 309, 352, 355.

Outside his own government department, Lynby came to the attention of another person of consequence, Thomas Bekynton, bishop of Bath and Wells, the former keeper of the privy seal, and together with Bekynton he applied for a royal licence to grant to Winchester College land and property at Otterborne in Hampshire, their application proving successful in June 1446. Their intention was apparently to provide for the obit of the lawyer Robert Colpays*, a former pupil at the school, but how Lynby had come to be involved in this endowment is not clear. C143/450/15; CPR, 1441-6, p. 444. It might be taking speculation too far to suggest that he had first met Colpays when they were fellow Members of the Commons in 1433.

Lynby is last recorded in the years 1451 and 1452, acting as an attorney in the Exchequer court for successive abbots of St. Albans in a suit brought by the treasurer of the Household, John Stourton II*, Lord Stourton. Reg. Whethamstede ed. Riley, i. 56-58, 68. There is a possibility that he was the man of this name who had purchased the manor of Brache in Kneesworth, Cambs. in 1426. If so, he died bef. 1464, when his wid. Joan conveyed it to a London draper: VCH Cambs. viii. 49-54.