WARYN, John

Probably descended from a namesake who was twice mayor of Lynn in the 1380s, Waryn was almost certainly the man who became a freeman of the town in December 1427. Assuming his father was a burgess, he was a younger son because he purchased his freedom, the automatic right to which pertained only to first-born sons.5 Norf. Official Lists ed. Le Strange, 190; King’s Lynn bor. recs., translation of hall bk. 1422-9, 1450, KL/C 7/29, p. 172. There is some limited evidence for relating to Waryn’s real property at Lynn. Deeds and other local documents show that he possessed a tenement at Fuller Row, possibly that for which he paid an annual rent of 3s. to the guild of Corpus Christi, and a meadow.6 King’s Lynn bor. recs., deeds, 1468, 1493, KL/C 50/219, 366; treasurers’ acct. Corpus Christi guild, KL/C 57/21.

Waryn was a merchant, and in the late 1420s he, Thomas Burgh* and Bartholomew Petipas* sued a number of foreign merchants from Hamburg in England’s admiralty court for allegedly seizing goods belonging to them. They won their suit, but in response the defendants appealed to the King, claiming that the court had pronounced an unjust sentence against them.7 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 36-37. In 1435 Waryn was one of a number of merchants of Lynn who agreed that the borough should tax its inhabitants, to pay the costs of sending the mayor to Bruges as part of a royal embassy commissioned to negotiate with representatives of the Hanseatic towns.8 Hall bk. KL/C 7/3, f. 51v. Within the realm, he may have had business connexions with London: at the very least, he had dealings with some of its citizens. During the early 1430s he was a feoffee of the London grocers, Thomas Catworth* and William Browning, for properties at Lynn which were then in their hands as mortgagees.9 CAD, ii. A2963, 2966, 2985. Later that decade, Richard Frank of London, the uncle and namesake of the Richard Frank* who represented Lynn in several mid fifteenth-century Parliaments, appointed him one of his executors in his will of 1438.10 PCC 24 Luffenham (PROB11/3, f. 190).

By the mid 1430s, Waryn was a prominent local figure, listed among those in Norfolk whom the government expected to swear the oath to keep the peace administered throughout the country in 1434.11 CPR, 1429-36, p. 405. He had joined Lynn’s upper council at Michaelmas 1430. Five years later, he began his first term as mayor, for which the borough afterwards rewarded him £20 for his services, a regard decided upon before the arrears of his account as mayor were calculated at over £94 in May 1437.12 KL/C 7/3, ff. 73, 78v. By then he had recently returned from his only Parliament, which met from 21 Jan. to 27 Mar. that year. His second term in the mayoralty was unexpected, since he took over from William Kirketon, who had died a few weeks after his election to the office.13 Ibid. f. 194v. It fell upon Waryn to replace Kirketon because he was then alderman of Lynn’s dominant institution, the Holy Trinity guild, a position he had held since May 1439. During his time as alderman he and the guild’s other officers successfully petitioned the Crown for a renewal of letters patent of 1392, which had licensed a grant of land in mortmain to the guild, and won corporate status for their institution.14 CPR, 1391-6, p. 149; 1435-41, p. 524. It is not known why Waryn gave up the office of alderman, a position usually held for life, in 1446. A few weeks before he relinquished it, the corporation delegated him and other burgesses to seek contributions from all of the borough’s guilds towards the costs of receiving Henry VI, who came to Lynn in August 1446.15 KL/C 7/3, f. 217v. Among these guilds was that of Corpus Christi, which Waryn himself had joined in October 1434,16 KL/C 57/20. and subsequently served as its master.

Waryn sat in his only Parliament a couple of years before becoming alderman of the Trinity guild. Within a month of the Parliament of 1437 opening at Westminster, he and his fellow MP, Thomas Burgh, sent a letter to the mayor, who prepared a response for them.17 KL/C 7/3, f. 75v. The subject of their correspondence is unknown, but it was not necessarily connected with the Parliament. It often fell to MPs, particularly when they were sitting at Westminster, to pursue lawsuits and other matters on behalf of their communities, and between Parliaments the corporation of Lynn regularly sent men to London to conduct business on its behalf. Waryn himself was no stranger to the City, for in 1430 he and John Parmenter* had gone there to take a security for a debt of £100 which John Drewell, esquire, owed the borough.18 Ibid. ff. 3v, 4. After leaving the Commons, Waryn was involved in choosing Lynn’s MPs – a process distinct from the subsequent drawing up of the formal return – to at least two Parliaments. During his second term as mayor he nominated four of the 12 burgesses who chose Burgh and Henry Thoresby* to sit for Lynn in the Parliament of 1445, and he himself was one of those who selected Richard Frank and John Style* in 1447.19 Ibid. ff. 199, 231v.

Besides sitting in Parliament, Waryn participated in negotiations concerning Lynn with its feudal lord, the bishop of Norwich, on several occasions in the late 1430s and early 1440s.20 Ibid. ff. 88, 94, 127v, 157. He also represented the borough in its dealings with local magnates. In early 1441, for example, he was one of the burgesses who rode to Norwich, to meet the duke of Norfolk in connexion with a ‘certain matter’ between the King and Bishop’s Lynn.21 Ibid. f. 135v. Afterwards, in July 1443, he and other townsmen held discussions with the council of Thomas, Lord Scales, about his water-mill in South Lynn, the purchase of which the Trinity guild completed in 1448.22 Ibid. ff. 175v; 176v, 217v; HMC 11th Rep. III, 204; CPR, 1446-52, p. 125.

By that date, Waryn no longer held any official position at Lynn, save his place on the 24. Still a member of that council at Michaelmas 1450, he was dead by the following May when John Pygot, one of his executors, went to his house to take charge of a chest.23 KL/C 7/29, p. 317. It is likely that the Robert Waryn who lived at Bishop’s Lynn in the late fifteenth century was a relative of the MP, if not his son.24 C1/64/763.