MAYNE, Thomas (d.1450), of Colchester, Essex.

Mayne’s brief career ended abruptly and violently, a victim of the unpopularity of the royal household in the time of William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. His death was reported by a London chronicler: on Sunday 5 July, as the Cade rebels occupied the city, ‘at hyghe mas tyme’ the rebel captain ‘lette to be heddyd a man of Hampton, a squyer, the whyche was namyd Thomas Mayne’. Historical Collns. Citizen London (Cam. Soc. ser. 2, xvii), 193. This description of the MP as ‘a man of Hampton’ explains his tragic end, for it refers not to his geographical origins but to his service under John Hampton II*, an esquire for the King’s body. Four days before, one of Cade’s lieutenants, John Gigges, had come to Colchester, both to incite rebellion and to find Hampton, then constable of the royal castle there. With Hampton absent, he seized Mayne, his master’s deputy in the constableship, and brought him to Cade at Southwark. It was there that, on 4 July, Mayne drew up a brief will, no doubt already conscious of the fate that awaited him. I.M.W. Harvey, Jack Cade, 94; PCC 12 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 91).

When he was murdered, Mayne was probably still a young man. He first appears in the records on 14 May 1444, when he shared with his master Hampton a royal grant of a large building in London. In June 1445 his wife, Margaret, was added to the grantees, implying that the couple had married in the interval. A further royal grant followed when, on 27 Mar. 1446, he and Margaret were granted an annuity of £5 13s. 4d., assigned on the farm of the manor of Seavington Denis in Somerset, with the further concession that when the term of the current farmer, John Jewe*, ended at Michaelmas 1450, they would have the custody of the manor at only £4 p.a. CPR, 1441-6, pp. 258, 350, 418. In this last grant Mayne was described as ‘King’s serjeant’, making explicit his place in the royal household, but it is an open question whether he came to Hampton’s attention as a household man or whether he owed his place there to Hampton’s patronage. Given their very different geographical origins, with Hampton coming from Staffordshire and Mayne from Essex, the former explanation is to be preferred. What, however, is not in doubt is Hampton’s responsibility for Mayne’s election, as a pure carpet-bagger, to three successive Parliaments in the late 1440s. It is probably no more than coincidence that, at an inq. held at Bridgnorth before Hampton’s brother Boyce in 1439, ‘Guy Huyde’ was a juror: CIPM, xxvi. 146. Other evidence shows that Mayne’s father-in-law was from Essex, but, if Guy Hide did have connexions in Bridgnorth, it may provide an additional explanation for Mayne’s election for that borough.

This early promise of Mayne’s career was to be cut short. As he faced death on 4 July he had time only to make a few hurried bequests. He granted small sums to the fabric of the churches of All Saints and St. Peter, Colchester, and to the belfry of the nearby church of West Bergholt, and he remembered a favoured servant named Maurice, who was to have a horse and as much as 40s. The likelihood is that Maurice had accompanied him on his journey from Colchester. All the rest of his property, both lands and goods (neither of which were specified in detail) were left to his wife and unnamed children. His executors were to be his widow, his father-in-law, and William Costantyne, who is probably to be identified with the London skinner of that name. The most revealing part of the will, however, were its witnesses. These were headed by two former Colchester MPs, Robert Selby* and William Lecche*. PCC 12 Rous. Clearly Mayne had not been the only prominent local man brought by Cade’s lieutenant from the town. Lecche’s presence is particularly interesting, because in February 1453 he was to be indicted for having supported the rebels on 1 July 1450. Yet the fact that he was present when Mayne made his will suggests that he was falsely accused. KB9/26/1/17.