PYKWELL, John

More may be added to the earlier biography.3 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 151. He is to be distinguished from his namesake of Stonton Wyville who attested the Leics. return in 1407 and was named as a tax collector in the county in 1402 and 1406: C219/10/4; CFR, xii. 190; xiii. 63. It may have been this John who was granted an annuity of £10 by Hen. IV on 7 Dec. 1399: CPR, 1399-1401, p. 147. The annuity, charged on the shrievalty of Leics., was still being paid in 1423: CPR, 1422-9, p. 43; E159/199, brevia Easter rot. 38. It is possible that our MP was the recipient, although there is no other evidence to identify him as a servant of the house of Lancaster.

On 7 Nov. 1413 Pykwell was one of 11 merchants pardoned by the King for the custom due for 91 sarplers of wool and 200 wool-fells which, destined for Calais, had been lost when Le Christofre went up in flames at Ipswich. Later, he was among a group of merchants accused by a merchant of Genoa of the ‘untrue packing’ of 86 sarplers.4 CPR, 1413-16, p. 127; Cal. P. and M. London, 1412-37, p. 249. This suggests that he was a wool merchant on a reasonable scale, and he is designated as ‘woolman’ in the legal records. He is described as such in Hilary term 1426 when, as an executor of William Pykwell of Sileby, a few miles to the north of Leicester, he was sued for a debt of as much as 100 marks by Margaret, widow of Sir Thomas Rempston†, former steward of the honour of Leicester.5 CP40/660, rot. 298d. If this suggests that our MP’s origins lay in Sileby, other evidence implies they should be sought in the south of the county. In 1419 he was described as a woolman of Market Harborough, some miles to the south-east of Leicester, when sued for maintenance by a dyer.6 KB27/632, rot. 30d.

Pykwell acquired affiliations with the local gentry when his daughter, Maud, married Richard Danet of Bromkinsthorpe, a gentleman living on the outskirts of Leicester. Danet joined our MP’s widow as the executors of his will when Pykwell died soon after his second Parliament in 1431.7 E. Acheson, Leics. in 15th Cent. 224-5 (where the da. is wrongly named Mabel); CP40/684, rot. 186d. The widow was assessed on an income of £5 in the subsidy returns of 1435-6, presumably derived from property once in his hands.8 E179/192/59. Maud later married another minor member of the Leicestershire gentry, Thomas de la Hay.9 CP40/760, rot. 205. Pykwell appears to have had another da., Margaret, but it is not known whom she married: CP40/677, rot. 382d.