COTYNG, Thomas

A draper by trade, Cotyng was already an established member of the Rochester elite when he was returned to his only Parliament in November 1449. Three years earlier he had served as bailiff of the city and in this capacity he witnessed a local will.2 Centre for Kentish Studies, Rochester consist. ct. wills, 1440-53, DRb/PWr 1, f. 48. Nothing is known of the manner of Cotyng’s election as MP but he served alongside the royal herald, John Chester alias Wryxworth*. After this date the surviving evidence suggests that Cotyng continued to play a leading role in the city. In 1455 he stood surety for the two burgesses elected to represent Rochester in Parliament.3 C219/16/3. Six years later one Philip Baker of Rochester named him as his executor, a duty for which he was rewarded with a bequest of 20s., and, presumably in his capacity as a member of the city’s governing body, he was one of those who witnessed the document.4 Rochester consist. ct. wills, 1453-61, DRb/PWr 2, f. 220. Although never appointed to a royal commission, Cotyng was among those asked to appraise certain ‘mudfish’ seized to the King’s use near Rochester in 1459.5 E159/235, recorda Trin. rot. 5.

Little evidence survives of Cotyng’s personal or business relations. In November 1441 Edmund Chertsey*, John Potager* and Thomas Glover quitclaimed to him their interest in five tenements in the city which they had by the enfeoffment of one Roger Newbolt.6 E326/3149. Around 1446 Cotyng and William Wyse of Rochester, a ‘barber and hackneyman’, were sued in Chancery by Richard Sewne. Sewne claimed he had made a gift of his goods and chattels to the two men to the intent that they would perform his last will and testament and that they had unlawfully retained them when ordered otherwise. In their defence, Wyse claimed to have delivered the goods to Sewne’s wife, Margaret, a claim Sewne rejected.7 C1/16/599-601. Between 1449 and 1453 Isabel, the widow of Cotyng’s son, John, sued our MP and her own father for a messuage in Rochester called Le Ship and lands in ‘Merryfield’ and ‘Fernt’ near Maidstone.8 C1/19/39. In 1463 he was one of the feoffees to whom Henry Hunt alias Baker* granted the inn called Le Herte on the Hoope.9 S.T. Aveling, ‘Rochester Inns’, Archaeolgia Cantiana, xxi. 316.

There are no further references until 15 Mar. 1481 when Thomas Cotyng of Rochester, draper (presumably our MP), made his will. He asked to be buried in St. Mary’s chapel within the parish church of St. Nicholas, and left money for the church’s fabric, for various lights there and for the performance of ten obits. He had enfeoffed two local men, Richard Dene and William Burbage, with his properties in Rochester and now instructed them to deliver seisin of the majority to his son, William. These included Le Ship and another messuage called Le Key. The tenement known as ‘Drapers’ in Bounds Lane was to be transferred to another son, Henry, while his property outside of the city, consisting of a shop in Melton by Sittingbourne, was to go to a third son, Edmund. His widow, Helen, was to receive £2 6s. 8d. annually from the estate and she and Cotyng’s son, Henry, were named as his executors.10 Rochester consist. ct. wills 1482-1502, DRb/PWr 5, ff. 7v-8.