PAKYN, William (d.1445), of Crawley, Suss. and Salisbury, Wilts.

Pakyn, who came from Crawley in Sussex, That William Pakyn of Crawley was the same person as William Pakyn of Salisbury is clear from Salisbury Domesday Bk. 2, G23/1/214, f. 40. is first recorded in March 1406 when he was associated with the Hampshire esquire John Kirkby† of Romsey and others in entering a bond in 800 marks at the staple of Westminster to Eleanor, the widow of Amauri, 4th Lord St. Amand. C241/199/18. The transaction was related to a lease of the estates formerly belonging to Thomas, Lord West (d.1405), whose heir was a minor in the King’s wardship, The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 521-2; CFR, xii. 305; xiii. 25; CPR, 1405-8, p. 143. and Pakyn’s involvement, like Kirkby’s, was as a feed retainer to the late lord. Long engaged in the affairs of the West family, he retained contact with them for many years after he moved to Salisbury. Described as ‘virus litteratus’ he witnessed the will which Thomas, 2nd Lord West, made at Stanbridge in Hampshire on 1 Aug. 1415, in which he received a substantial bequest of £13 6s. 8d. As it happened, West was accidently killed at sea a year later, and when the executors named by him refused to serve Pakyn was one of two men to whom Archbishop Chichele assigned the administration of his estate. Reg. Chichele, ii. 97-99. It may have been this task that led to Pakyn’s outlawry in the common pleas for failing to answer the suit of a clerk named Geoffrey Ippelpenne for a debt of £20; he successfully sued for a pardon and return to lawful status in November 1419. Eighteen months later, in May 1421, he took out letters of protection to join Henry V’s army in Normandy, in the company led by Lord Thomas’s brother and heir, Reynold, only for the protection to be revoked in the following July because he had failed to set sail. CPR, 1416-22, pp. 230, 375; DKR, xliv. 626. Pakyn’s continued association with the Wests is seen in his participation in the acquisition in 1424 of a royal licence to divert a road between the Sussex vills of Findon and Broadwater, and he was later recorded in receipt of annual fees of £9 13s. 4d. charged on the Dorset and Wiltshire estates of Lord Reynold, then also Lord de la Warre. Together with his patron he was possessed of land at Stanbridge in 1439. E163/7/31/1; CPR, 1422-9, p. 261; 1436-41, p. 562.

It is not known in what capacity Pakyn had first come to the attention of the Lords West, but it may well have been as an estate- manager. Although early on he had sometimes been described, perhaps disparagingly, as a ‘husbandman’ or ‘yeoman’, he came to be more usually styled ‘gentleman’. As such, he was outlawed again, this time for failing to answer the suit of John Washbourne, a London mercer to whom he was said to owe £25, although he once more purchased a pardon, in July 1422. CPR, 1416-22, p. 434. A year later he found employment as deputy to John Arderne, the clerk of the King’s works, charged with the purveyance of materials needed for repairs and renovations to the royal manor-house and park at Clarendon. Pakyn’s task was to conscript workmen, imprisoning any who refused to serve, and to requisition the materials needed for the works, while making stringent inquiries into embezzlement. CPR, 1422-9, p. 107. It is a measure of his capabilities that he was kept on in the post for 17 years.

In the meantime, as early as the spring of 1409, Pakyn had married and established himself in Salisbury. He and his wife Alice purchased from Stephen Thorbourne’s father and executor his reversionary interest in the two tenements in Chipper Street which Alice held for term of her life; it looks as if she was Stephen’s widow. To these properties the couple added cottages nearby in Chipper Lane, next door to their dwelling, Salisbury Domesday Bk. 2, f. 5v; Tropenell Cart. i. 258-60. and in 1415 Pakyn purchased another tenement with shops and outbuildings on the corner of Chipper Street and Endless Street. The 160 marks he paid to Thomas and Alice Randolf a few years later sufficed to complete the latter acquisition. As a property owner of substance, Salisbury Domesday Bk. 2, ff. 17, 40, 105v; CAD, vi. C4996; Hants RO, Jervoise of Herriard mss, 44M69/C/529. he was often called upon to witness deeds in the city, Tropenell Cart. i. 229-31, 234-5. and was accepted as a member of the important fraternity of St. George in the autumn of 1414. First General Entry Bk. no. 140. Ten years later, Pakyn began his long involvement in the government of Salisbury, which saw him regularly attending convocations of citizens over a period of 20 years. Ibid. passim. He attested the Wiltshire elections to the Parliament of 1427, and following its dissolution in April 1428 he was named one of two constables who were to assess and collect money to pay the expenses of the MPs sent by Salisbury. Ibid. no. 257.

Pakyn’s first election as mayor followed six months later, and in November 1430, a year after the end of his term, he joined three other former mayors and the present incumbent of the mayoralty, Richard Gatour*, in obtaining a royal licence to grant certain messuages in the city to the mayor and commonalty. This was in part satisfaction of Henry IV’s licence permitting the civic authorities to acquire in mortmain property to the value of 100 marks p.a. in mitigation of the charges, collections and subsidies incumbent upon them. CPR, 1429-36, p. 101. Further confirmation of Pakyn’s prominent position in Salisbury came not long afterwards with his election to represent the city in the Parliament summoned to meet on 12 Jan. 1431. For their attendance in the Commons, he and the lawyer William Alexander* were each to be paid £7 6s. for 73 days’ service, at the full rate of 2s. a day, and Pakyn continued the business of the Parliament in the autumn by agreeing to act in Salisbury as an assessor of the tax which the Commons had granted. First General Entry Bk. nos. 275, 277, 278. During the previous decade he had occasionally sued his debtors in the central courts, including pleas in which he assisted his second wife in her task as executrix of her former husband John Lussh. CP40/657, rot. 266; 669, rots. 18d, 156. Now, while up at Westminster for the Parliament of 1431, he took the opportunity to press his suits in person, with the assistance of his son Thomas, who had trained to be an attorney. CP40/680, rot. 372. However, two years later William was again a defendant rather than the plaintiff in a suit for debt, when William Hore I* of Chichester accused him of withholding the sum of £20. CP40/688, rot. 18d; 691, rot. 226d.

Others clearly regarded Pakyn as a man to be trusted with their affairs: in January 1433 the widowed Alice Randolf named him as an executor. Later that year he served as a juror at the inquisition post mortem conducted in Salisbury on John, duke of Norfolk. Reg. Chichele, ii. 471-2, 672; C139/60/43. Pakyn replaced John Bromley* as an assessor of subsidies in the city in October 1435, when Bromley set off to attend Parliament, and was later among those given the task of raising the wages due to him and his fellow MP. First General Entry Bk. nos. 306, 318. At an election conducted at Salisbury’s convocation on 7 Dec. 1436, attended by Pakyn as a member of the council of 24, he was himself elected to the Parliament due to assemble on the following 21 Jan. Before he departed for Westminster he helped settle quarrels which had erupted when the argumentative mayor Thomas Freeman* had a serious falling out with the chamberlains; he was one of 13 members of the council who exonerated Freeman from paying the fine of £3 imposed for his unacceptable behaviour. He later received expenses for parliamentary service lasting 72 days, Ibid. 325, 326, 330. in the course of which he stood surety at the Exchequer for a fellow citizen, Simon Poy*, on the latter’s appointment as alnager in Salisbury and throughout Wiltshire. Four months later Pakyn took out a royal pardon as ‘of Salisbury, gentleman, deputy to the clerk of the King’s works at Clarendon’, perhaps to excuse him from penalties for misdemeanours while in office. CFR, xvi. 308; C67/38, m. 10. He finally relinquished his post at Clarendon in May 1440, although whether willingly or reluctantly does not appear. CPR, 1436-41, p. 404; 1441-6, p. 168.

Pakyn regularly contributed to the loans Salisbury made to the Crown, while voluntarily assisting the authorities to raise the large sums demanded. He sometimes provided pledges for the payment of fines by fellow citizens seeking to be excused from the offices of alderman and reeve, First General Entry Bk. nos. 297, 314, 319, 333, 345B, 354, 360A, 371B, 391. and was one of a dozen selected in December 1440 to supervise the construction of the great ditch. In the following month he journeyed to London with copies of letters patent concerning Salisbury’s liberties, presumably so that these might be shown to the justices in the law-courts. Once again, he took the opportunity of a visit to the capital to bring suits on his own account (such as one against John Scott*), although while there he had to defend himself against charges of debt brought by the Salisbury merchant, Richard Payn*. Ibid. nos. 358, 359; CP40/724, rots. 148d, 231d. Pakyn served as a juror at the post mortem on Sir Humphrey Stafford* conducted at Salisbury on 20 Oct. 1442, C139/105/9. just a few days before his election as mayor for a second term. During his year of office, in April 1443 the city granted the King an aid in relief of Bayonne and Bordeaux and for the defence of English rule in Gascony, and it was decided that the burden of the sum of 40 marks demanded should be divided equally between the mayor, together with his brethren, and the commonalty. Perhaps mindful of the drain on his personal finances which the office entailed, on 3 Oct. Pakyn asked to be reimbursed for the various expenses he had incurred during his mayoralty, which included payments he had forwarded to officials of the King and the dukes of Gloucester and Somerset. Nevertheless, not all his claims were allowed by the auditors. First General Entry Bk. nos. 373, 381-6.

In the Hilary term of 1445 Pakyn was attached in the court of common pleas to respond to the continuing charges of Richard Payn. It was Payn’s contention that Pakyn had defaulted on bonds entered at London in September 1439 to pay him £100 before the following 25 Mar., having only satisfied him of £80. Appearing by attorney, Pakyn stated that a dyer named John Atkyn was also party to the bonds which had been made to fulfil the conditions of an indenture contracted at Salisbury –this they had done by paying a total of £81 13s. 4d. in instalments. The sheriff of Wiltshire was instructed to have a jury from Salisbury in court in the Easter term to settle the matter, but by then Pakyn had died. His death occurred shortly after 16 Jan. CP40/736, rots. 333, 451d; First General Entry Bk. no. 396. In 1437 the MP had transferred possession of three tenements in Chipper Lane, Salisbury, to his son Thomas and the latter’s wife Elizabeth and their issue. This probably formed part of their marriage settlement. However, Thomas soon followed him to the grave, in March 1445, leaving as the next Pakyn heir a young son he had named after his father. Tropenell Cart. i. 258-62.