GYNE, John

The Gyne family possibly originated from Walberswick, since a court at nearby Dunwich fined a namesake of the MP from that town in October 1410. Later, in February 1413, another Dunwich court licensed William Gyne to conduct a property transaction with John Brooke of Sizewell, but the connexion, if any, between William and the future MP is unknown. John Gyne first features in local records of the early 1430s, by which date he was paying 26d. p.a. in rents to the corporation of Dunwich.3 Add. Rolls 40716, 40720; SC11/886, mm. 14, 18, 27. At one stage, probably in the 1430s or 1440s, Gyne was the defendant in a Chancery suit. The plaintiff, Richard Cuddon* of Dunwich, declared that he had acquired a last of red herring from Gyne, with whom he had entered a bond as a security that he would pay the purchase price of ten marks. Later, Gyne had agreed to extend the period given for payment of this sum to five years. Two other Dunwich residents had thereupon entered a new obligation on Cuddon’s behalf, yet Gyne had refused to return the original bond. The purpose of the bill was to make him surrender it, but the outcome of the suit is unrecorded.4 C1/16/444.

There is no evidence that Gyne held any office at Dunwich before September 1442, when he began his first term as bailiff. During this term, the King granted the keeping of the town’s fee farm to William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, after the death of the previous holder, William Phelip†, Lord Bardolf, in 1441. The grant, of February 1443, was for ten years, beginning at Michaelmas 1442, and Gyne and Thomas Peers* acted as the earl’s mainpernors. Gyne features as a ‘merchant’ in the grant although a royal pardon he received four years later described him as a ‘yeoman’.5 CFR, xvii. 154, 248; C67/39, m. 21. His official position in the town probably explains why he was one of those chosen to act as a surety for the earl. For the remainder of his first term as bailiff, as well as during his second period in that office, he would have had occasional dealings with de la Pole or his servants concerning payments of the farm. Whether he formed any sort of connexion with the peer as a result is impossible to say. Although he gained election to the Parliament of 1447, called to bring down de la Pole’s opponent, the duke of Gloucester, it is impossible to tell whether he had become one of de la Pole’s men. If he had, he must have found his second Parliament an uncomfortable experience, for it was the assembly that impeached de la Pole, by then duke of Suffolk.

Following the dissolution of that Parliament in June 1450, Gyne survived for another year. Having drawn up his will on 13 June 1451, he had died by the following 31 July, when it was proved.6 IC/AA2/1/170. He sought burial in the parish church of St. John, Dunwich, to the high altar of which he left 20s. Each priest who attended his funeral was to have 4d., each singing man 2d. and each pauper 1d. He bequeathed 13s. 4d. towards the fabric of the same church, and he set aside eight marks to support a chantry for one year, during which the chaplain serving it was to sing for the souls of him and his friends in the Maison Dieu, a local religious institution. To his wife, Juliana, he bequeathed for the rest of her life his household utensils, an annuity of four marks and his marsh situated in nearby Westleton. He also left 20s. to his son, Richard, whom he apparently intended for the priesthood. Supporting the suggestion that his family were originally from Walberswick is another bequest, by which he left the considerable sum of 100 marks to that town, in aid of its poorer inhabitants at the levying of lay subsidies for the Crown, and in return for prayers in its parish church. Furthermore, he likewise assigned the issues of his place in ‘Bromeswelle’ for the support of Walberswick’s poor at times of royal taxation. Gyne named two leading Dunwich residents, Nicholas Shipman and Thomas Wheteloff, his executors, and appointed Geoffrey Prys, esquire, and a notary, John Wode, to act as supervisors of the will.