AYLLEWYN, William

Admitted to the freedom of Maldon at the beginning of 1406,3 Maldon ct. roll 1405-7, D/B 3/3/2, m. 2d. Possibly, he had served an apprenticeship, since his entry fine was 6s. 8d., the sum customarily paid by apprentices becoming freemen: W.J. Petchey, ‘Bor. of Maldon’ (Leicester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1972), 58. It is not clear whether he was the William ‘Ayllewy’ who a few years earlier had been associated with the countess of Oxford in a prolonged dispute over the prior’s office at Earl’s Colne, an Essex cell of Abingdon abbey, Berks.: CPR, 1399-1401, pp. 414-15; 1401-5, p. 430; VCH Essex, ii. 102. Ayllewyn resided in St. Mary’s parish and owned property in nearby Heybridge as well as within the borough.4 C1/158/56. He began his career as an office-holder before the end of Henry IV’s reign, going on to serve no fewer than 12 terms as a bailiff. A merchant, he rented a shop under the town hall in the early 1420s,5 Maldon ct. bk., D/B 3/1/1, ff. 20, 22. and he traded at home and abroad. He was one of three men from the borough to whom the Crown granted the right to export grain in 1427,6 DKR, xlviii. 247. and 12 years later the King licensed him to buy 200 quarters of barley in Norfolk and ship them to Maldon.7 CPR, 1436-41, p. 234. He exported cheese and butter in the late 1430s and he shipped corn and oats to the Low Countries in the following decade.8 DKR, xlviii. 335, 347, 349. His business affairs sometimes gave rise to disputes. In 1425, for example, he assaulted Robert Profote, a London shipwright, at Maldon with a drawn dagger and sued him for debt in the borough court.9 Maldon ct. roll 1424-5, D/B 3/3/15, mm. 5, 5d. (His dealings with Profote suggest that he was a shipowner, but the evidence is lacking.)

During the early 1430s, Ayllewyn acted as an attorney in Maldon’s court for no less a plaintiff than Henry, Lord Bourgchier,10 Ibid. 1429-32, D/B 3/3/18. but there is no evidence that he served Bourgchier in any other capacity. He was also linked with Robert Darcy I*, the head of the most important family resident in Maldon. William was one of Darcy’s feoffees and the two men were associated with each other in the grain trade.11 Maldon bor. recs., deed D/B 3/3/547 (2); DKR, xlviii. 247. Their relationship dated back to at least the autumn of 1422 when Ayllewyn stood surety for Darcy, upon the election of the latter to Parliament.12 C219/13/1. Ayllewyn began his own career as an MP seven years later and he gained election to the Commons for a second time in 1433, even though he was then serving as bailiff of Maldon. He also participated in at least two parliamentary elections for the county of Essex, and he acted as a mainpernor for his fellow burgess, Richard Bemond*, upon Bemond’s election to the Commons of 1437.13 C219/15/1.

There is no record of when Ayllewyn died, or of his activities after his last term as bailiff had expired. His widow, Agnes, was one of his executors. It was probably in the early 1460s that she and her second husband, John Ryggys of Bury St. Edmunds, began a Chancery suit against her co-executor, Henry Maldon, whom they accused of denying her possession of the MP’s holdings at Maldon and Heybridge.14 C1/158/56 (see also C1/16/271). Although referred to as ‘of London’ on one occasion (CCR, 1461-8, pp. 144-5), Ryggys described himself as of Bury in his will of 1465 and chose to be buried there: archdeaconry of Sudbury wills, J545/1. According to them Maldon was thwarting the performance of her late husband’s will, in which Ayllewyn had awarded her a life interest in these properties, save certain tenements he had set aside for his two sons when they came of age. Robert, the elder of Ayllewyn’s sons, began his own Chancery suit against his mother and stepfather in about 1463, in order to safeguard his future inheritance.15 C1/27/113-14. In the late 1460s or early 1470s Agnes, by then in her second widowhood, was a party to yet another dispute heard in the same court, but this time over property that Ryggys had held in Maldon.16 C1/38/21. When she made her will in 1493 she chose burial at Bury, rather than beside her first husband. Ayllewyn does not feature in the will, although she did make small bequests to Maldon’s Carmelite friary and its parish church of St. Mary.17 Archdeaconry of Sudbury wills, J545/4.