REYGNES, Thomas

A cadet member of a family long established in Buckinghamshire, Reygnes was the grandson and namesake of a veteran of the French wars. The elder Thomas also had a parliamentary career, for he was a knight of the shire in four late 14th-century Parliaments, twice for Buckinghamshire and twice for Bedfordshire. The MP’s father Richard was one of Sir Thomas’s younger sons, probably by a member of the Morteyn family, since he held a reversionary interest in the Morteyn manor at Marston Moretaine.3 Beds. Historical Rec. Soc. xxix. 82; CIPM, xxiii. 159. After the childless Sir John Morteyn died in 1373,4 CIPM, xv. 398. his widow Elizabeth kept possession of the manor during her widowhood. She outlived Richard, meaning that the reversion vested in the MP after her death in 1428. It is not clear if Reygnes came into immediate possession of Marston Moretaine, or of another property, perhaps also a manor, which his father had held at Marston. Elizabeth’s inquisition post mortem found that he was a minor of 13 years of age when she died, but in July 1429 the escheator in Bedfordshire was ordered to remove the King’s hand from the two manors and to deliver to Reygnes any issues taken, suggesting that he had recently attained his majority.5 CIPM, xxiii. 159, 224; CCR, 1422-9, p. 438; VCH Beds. iii. 311.

The former Morteyn manor at Marston Moretaine was held of the neighbouring manor of Milbrook, a lordship which belonged to the influential Sir John Cornwall, who was created Lord Fanhope in 1432.6 CIPM, xxiii. 159. By the later 1430s Cornwall was challenging Reynold, Lord Grey of Ruthin, for pre-eminence in Bedfordshire, and in January 1439 he and his followers clashed with members of Grey’s affinity at the Bedford sessions of the peace. Perhaps formerly Fanhope’s ward, Reygnes attended the sessions as his retainer, and he was among those of that lord’s men who were afterwards pardoned for their part in the fracas which had occurred.7 CPR, 1436-41, p. 246. In November 1440 Reygnes accompanied his patron to Gravelines in France, where Fanhope and others received the oath of the duke of Orleans, until recently a prisoner of the English.8 Foedera ed. Rymer (Hague edn.), v (i), 102. By that date Grey had been succeeded by his grandson, Edmund Grey, whom Edward IV was to create earl of Kent, but Fanhope left no legitimate issue when he died at the end of 1443. The deaths of the two lordly adversaries did much to diminish local rivalries in Bedfordshire, although these were probably already ebbing when Fanhope died. When the Parliament of 1442 was summoned, Reygnes and John Enderby*, a prominent member of the Grey affinity, were returned as the knights of the shire for Bedfordshire, a result suggesting a deliberate compromise on the part of the electorate.9 R.A. Griffiths, Hen. VI, 571-2. The only county commission on which Reygnes served arose from his Membership of the Commons, since it related to a tax he and his fellow MPs had granted to the King.10 PROME, xi. 329-30. Two years after the dissolution of Parliament, he witnessed the transfer of his late patron’s estates in Bedfordshire to Ralph, Lord Cromwell, who had bought them from Fanhope’s executors.11 CCR, 1435-41, pp. 222-3. Nothing else is known about the MP between that date and his death. Although neither his will nor inquisition post mortem has survived, a brass in Marston Moretaine church, on which he, his wife Alice, and their nine children are represented, records that he died on 9 Nov. 1451. Along with those of the Reygnes family, the brass also depicts the arms of the Morteyns, the family of his putative paternal grandmother, of the Maleverers, probably his mother’s kindred, and of the Frowyks, perhaps Alice’s family. Much of the church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was rebuilt in the fifteenth century, a project which Reygnes is said to have begun.12 Add. 32490, K(2); Bucks Recs. xxii. 120; VCH Beds. iii. 311. Alice appears to have moved to London after her husband’s death, since she was probably the Alice Reygnes of St. Botolph without Bishopsgate, widow, who conveyed her goods in that parish and elsewhere in the realm to a group of trustees in 1459.13 CCR, 1454-61, p. 389. She may have outlived him by many years, for Ralph Verney* of London and Buckinghamshire referred to his ‘aunte’, ‘dame Alice Reynes’, in his will of 1479. In the will Verney provided for this Alice and a subsequent husband of hers, John Christmas, to benefit from prayers he sought from the Franciscans at Northampton.14 Logge Reg. of PCC Wills ed. Boatwright, Habberjam and Hammond, i. 20.

Reygnes was succeeded by his son and namesake. The younger Thomas also inherited the manor of Clifton Reygnes, as the next heir of his childless cousin, John Reygnes, the last male representative of the main line of the Reygnes family, who had died at about the same time as the MP.15 VCH Bucks. iv. 318. While he is not known to have sat in Parliament he was considerably more active in local administration than his father. The first Yorkist-appointed sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, he also served as a j.p. in Bedfordshire between March 1467 and his death. It is possible that he was killed in the civil wars, since he died on 14 Apr. 1471, the date of the battle of Barnet.16 C140/41/22. Near the end of his life he sold a messuage and lands in Stanbridge, Eggington and Tilsworth in south Bedfordshire to John Morell of Dunstaple, but his feoffees and son and heir, John Reygnes, afterwards disputed Morell’s possession of this estate. Morell took action in the Chancery against these opponents, although in 1484 the master of the rolls ruled that he should surrender his claim to the messuage. He did not lose out entirely, for John Reygnes was ordered to pay him £20 in return.17 CCR, 1468-76, no. 447; 1476-85, nos. 132, 1314-15, 1321; C1/65/61-65.