MAYNE, Richard

More may be added to the earlier biography. The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 710.

Mayne’s contacts with the Fitzalan earls of Arundel dated back at least to the days of Earl John. Their relations were not, however, invariably cordial: in the summer of 1430 the earl was suing Richard and his kinsman John Mayne in the King’s bench for a breach of the statute of forgery. KB27/677, rot. 48d. Some years earlier, Mayne had also come into conflict with one John Denys, ‘a common maintainer of quarrels’ in Somerset, whom he accused of depriving him of his landholdings in that county in a bid to settle them on his own son. C1/69/190.

In June 1437 Mayne, then serving as Bishop Stafford’s bailiff of the episcopal liberty in Wells, fell victim to an attack by a mob of some 40 townsmen, who sought to prevent him from executing his office in taking sureties of the peace from two local men. KB9/230B/228, 234; KB27/715, rex rot. 3. It is not certain at what date he took up this post, but it is just possible that he already held it at the time of his election to the Commons for Wells. Although the elections of the city’s parliamentary representatives were made in the convocation of the citizens, the sheriff’s precept was directed to the bishop’s bailiff, and it is thus interesting to find Mayne present in the shire court at the county elections of 1435, as well as among the delegation of the citizens certifying the city’s return to the sheriff in 1437. C219/14/5, 15/1. Although it was common for the MPs for Wells to be admitted to the freedom of the city prior to their election, this was not apparently the case with Mayne. Indeed, no record of his admission to the freedom has been found in the city’s convocation act books, but it may be assumed that he gained the privileges of citizenship by virtue of his marriage to the widow of Richard Pedewell probably at some point in 1440, since he was almost immediately elected one of the city’s constables of the peace, and went on to become its master in the autumn of 1443. He now inhabited a house in the northern part of the city, and also held half of a garden in the western part of Gropelane, as well as two acres of arable land in ‘Colvercroft’ and ‘La Longeland’, which he had leased from the corporation in August 1442. Wells convocation act bk. 303. When his term as master came to an end, Mayne was chosen one of the council of 24, and he continued to serve as such until his death, which probably occurred before May 1448, when the city records referred to a tenement as having formerly been his. Ibid. 323.