CANYNGES, Thomas

Thomas was a member of the most famous Bristol family of the later Middle Ages. His father, John, was one of the town’s principal property owners, and had added to the family’s fortunes though his trading ventures to southern Europe and to the Low Countries. His early death in 1405 left all six of his children still under age (with Thomas being aged about eight), and his widow pregnant with their last child. In the circumstances it was decided that the children should be split up, with Joan retaining only the guardianship of Thomas’s younger brother, William, and his sister Agnes. The remaining siblings were placed in the care of close friends, with the guardianship of Thomas, and his sisters Joan and Margaret, awarded to Margaret, widow of Thomas Beaupyne†. This arrangement lasted until 1408, by which time Canynges’s mother had taken as her second husband Thomas Young†. Young then assumed custody of Thomas and his three surviving siblings, each of whom was allocated a share of their father’s goods and chattels, worth a total of just under £300. The two Canynges brothers therefore spent the remainder of their childhood in the household of their mother and stepfather, and, in due course, they were joined by half-brothers, John and Thomas Young. The close relationship between the Canynges and Young children was thus forged at an early stage: all four men rose to prominence at about the same time, and to varying degrees all four came to be associated with the growing opposition to Henry VI’s government during the 1450s and with the new Yorkist regime.6 The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 476; Overseas Trade (Bristol Rec. Soc. vii), 303-4.

While William Canynges remained in Bristol, where he served as mayor on five occasions and was chosen three times as an MP, both Thomas and his half-brother John Young made their careers in London. Nothing is recorded of Thomas in the capital until 1422 when he acted as an arbiter in a dispute involving the grocer Nicholas Wyfold.7 CCR, 1429-35, p. 194. Four years later he was chosen as an executor by another grocer, William Mitchell†.8 The Commons 1386-1421, iii. 744; CPR, 1429-36, pp. 6, 98; CCR, 1429-35, p. 230. This suggests that even at that date he was already of some standing within the Grocers’ Company, and by 1428, no doubt aided by his mercantile antecedents and his inherited wealth, he had been admitted to the livery of the company. That same year he contributed £10 to a levy raised from the membership for the acquisition of the site of Grocers’ Hall in Conyhope Lane. This project was to be at the forefront of the Company’s activities for the next few years, and Canynges provided another £4 10s. in 1428-9 and contributed a further 20s. expenses for ‘the capasite of owr place in Conyhope lane’ the year after. He became a warden of the Company in August 1433 and went on to serve on three occasions as the master (or ‘governor’), a position reserved for an alderman of the Grocers who was responsible for supervising the work of the wardens. On the last occasion, in 1460-1, he held the post jointly with John Young who had probably joined the Company himself in the mid 1430s. In the meantime his family’s connexion with the London grocers was strengthened with the admission of his younger brother William as an ‘honorary’ member in 1441-2.9 Ms. Archs. Grocers’ Co. i. 172; ii. 175, 182-4, 230, 248, 263, 295, 359, 387; P. Nightingale, Med. Mercantile Community, 451.

Canynges’s prominence within the Grocers’ Company was bolstered by his trading activities, which in his case appear to have centred upon the export trade in cloth. Thus, early in 1433 he took a single shipment containing 82 short cloths to the continent through the port of London. His absence from subsequent customs accounts for that port can partly be explained by the fact that he was shipping a good deal of merchandise through Southampton. On 10 Mar. 1438 he exported 132 cloths on a carrack, and on 1 July took another 130 cloths through the port. Similar quantities were listed against his name ten years later. Not all his shipments went according to plan, however, for in the autumn of 1439 he brought a suit against a Southampton cooper over the carriage of 120 woollen cloths. Canynges claimed the sum of £40 for the failure of the cooper to transport the cloth safely.10 E122/141/29, f. 51; 203/1, f. 18; 209/1, ff. 37d, 58d; CP40/715, rot. 437d; Port Bk. 1448-9 (Soton. Rec. Ser. xxxvi), 58, 64. Nor was all the cloth purchased by Canynges destined for immediate export. In April 1429, during a crack-down against alien brokers who had not been sworn before the mayor of London, it emerged that Pietro Coniari had arranged a transaction between Canynges and an alien merchant, John de la Tore, in which Thomas handed over £100 worth of broad cloth in exchange for dates to the same value.11 Cal. P. and M. London, 1431-37, p. 225.

Like many merchants Canynges undertook much of his trade in partnership with others. By the late 1430s he had gone into partnership with a prominent London mercer, William Melreth*, for the purpose of taking merchandise across the North Sea to Zeeland. In May 1437 they obtained a royal licence enabling them to dispatch a ship called Le Marie, whose master was Walter Fryse, to Arnemuiden, and to man and arm three other vessels, a barge and a balinger. The Crown’s interest in this was plain, for under the terms of the licence Canynges and Melreth were to patrol the seas there for a month after their arrival, in return for keeping a share of any goods seized from enemy ships. The licence was also made conditional on them not importing any goods from Flanders.12 CPR, 1436-41, p. 64. Three years later dealings between the two men, Fryse, and a burgess of Calais named John Scot were the subject of an arbitration award made by the mayor of London, Robert Large*. Scot was owed the sum of 20 marks by Canynges and Melreth, but the actual amount that each was to repay was dependent upon whether or not Canynges had satisfied Fryse of 100s. out of a debt of £10 owed to the latter. Should Canynges have discharged this debt then he and Melreth were to pay Scot half the 20 marks each, but if he had not then Canynges was to pay £11 13s. 4d. and Melreth only £1 13s. 4d.13 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 26.

By this time more serious matters had come to occupy the minds of Canynges and a number of other London merchants, who found themselves on the receiving end of a series of malicious allegations concerning their mercantile activities. The instigator of these was Thomas Brown II*, an Exchequer official who was probably the son of a London grocer and had himself been admitted as a member of the Company in the mid 1430s. In April 1437 Brown and Canynges had been associated together when an alien merchant, Baldwin Sanheuy, made a formal release of all legal actions to them and others, including the treasurer, Ralph, Lord Cromwell. By this time, however, Brown had become a thorn in the side of many London merchants, principally because of the frequency with which he was able to obtain favourable royal licences enabling him to further his own business ventures. When, in late 1437 and early 1438, Brown was appointed to commissions charged with inquiring into customs evasions in Kent, he took the opportunity to move against some of his rivals. Those accused included Melreth and William Cottesbroke*, but also Canynges and his half-brother, John Young, who had gone into business together shortly after the latter’s arrival in London. On 19 Feb. 1438 it was found by an inquisition taken at Sittingbourne that the previous 15 July Canynges and Young had exported 200 woollen cloths and tin worth 400 marks from Queenborough to Zeeland on Walter Fryse’s ship without paying customs. Canynges admitted taking the goods on board, but claimed that he had paid customs in London, and Young not only denied his guilt but claimed that the inquiries had been heard before their enemies and ill-wishers. Eventually, in October 1439, Canynges and Young, like their fellow accused, obtained a royal pardon in respect of these charges.14 CCR, 1435-41, p. 115; CPR, 1436-41, pp. 339-40; Nightingale, 452-3. The significance of these events for the relations between London merchants and the Crown more broadly should not, however, be overstated. Though clearly a difficult time, particularly for relations within the Grocers’ Company, this was very much a localised dispute, albeit between men who would subsequently find themselves on opposite sides in the conflict between Lancaster and York. So, in the early 1440s John Young’s brother, Thomas, who was to be imprisoned in 1451 for calling for the recognition of the duke of York as Henry VI’s heir, was still associated with Brown in property transactions in Kent.15 e.g. CP25(1)/115/316/562.

As well as sending goods to northern Europe, Canynges was also concerned in trading ventures to the Italian cities and states. In October 1445 he, along with William Estfield* and Richard Quatermayns* were the recipients of a deed of gift made by Stephen Forster* of a large quantity of merchandise that Forster had imported from Venice and stored in a warehouse in the parish of St. George Eastcheap. The goods included luxury goods such as silks, gold brocade and tartarin, as well as spices such as cloves, ginger and pepper and sweet wine from Greece.16 Cal. P. and M. London, 1437-57, p. 83. Canynges’s own dealings with Italian merchants, which can be traced back to at least 1429, are less easy to document. He was evidently closely connected with William Cantelowe*, whose dealings with Italians are well attested, for in 1440 the two men jointly pledged the sum of 500 marks that wool exported to Middelburg by Filippo Borromei and Giovanni Micheli would in fact go to Lombardy.17 G.A. Holmes, ‘Anglo-Florentine Trade’, EHR, cviii. 377. In August 1456 Cantelowe and his fellow mercer, John Tate, were Canynges’s choice of arbiters in a dispute with one Guglielmo de Antignano. Both parties were required to enter into bonds for the large sum of £3,000 to abide by the award of the arbiters. The size of the bond suggests that the dispute was a serious one which may well have involved a large quantity of goods traded between them. The timing of this dispute is also significant, for it occurred just a few months after the outbreak of anti-Italian violence in London, following which Cantelowe, one of the wardens of the Mercers, was briefly imprisoned in Dudley castle for failing to control the younger members of his Company. It is possible, therefore, that the mayor and aldermen were especially conscious of the need to prevent relations with the Italian community from deteriorating still further.18 Jnl. 6, f. 101. Canynges was also, it appears, connected with Spanish merchants, with whom he may have had dealings in commodidites such as wine. In October 1458 he acted as one of the sureties for Sancho de Ordoigne who was granted a safe-conduct for a year after claiming wine that had been confiscated as enemy merchandise.19 E159/236, recorda Trin. rot. 3; W. Childs, Anglo-Castilian Trade, 51.

The successful business ventures of merchants such as Canynges and his fellow grocers like Richard Lee*, put them in a powerful position when it came to lending money to others. A popular device was the ‘gift’ of goods and chattels which was made both to relieve debts but most often as a means of enabling younger merchants to obtain credit. Canynges was a recipient of such gifts on numerous occasions, indicating that he was active in providing finance to his fellow Londoners. Many were fellow grocers, but his ‘customers’ also included fishmongers, tailors and mercers.20 Cal. P. and M. London, 1431-37, pp. 271, 289; 1437-57, pp. 160, 167, 170; CCR, 1447-54, pp. 47, 187; 1454-61, p. 143. In most of these cases the precise nature of the arrangements being entered into are not recorded. Elsewhere, however, the scale of his activities as a money-lender is better documented. In November 1429, for instance, Richard Knight of Oundle in Northamptonshire came before the mayor of the staple of Westminster to acknowledge a debt of £204 11s. 10d. owed to Canynges, but although it was due to be repaid at Christmas was still owing in February following. A similar sum was involved some 20 years later when Roger Talbot of Hadleigh in Suffolk was indebted to Canynges and William Venour for £200.21 C241/223/22, 235/87; Nightingale, 395.

The pattern of debts owed to Canynges, many of which were never satisfied, suggests that he maintained close links with Bristol and its region. In the early 1430s, for example, he was owed £33 16s. 8d. by William Bythewater, a Bristol merchant, who subsequently obtained a royal pardon after being outlawed for failing to appear in court. On a number of occasions in the 1450s his debtors included clothworkers from Somerset, which suggests that he was financing their businesses in some way. His provincial contacts were in general extremely broad, however. He was at the Lincoln staple in 1440 in pursuit of a debt, and he was owed sums of money by individuals from Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and York.22 CPR, 1429-36, pp. 17, 161; 1441-6, p. 117; 1446-52, p. 482; 1452-61, pp. 268, 377, 449, 455. Some of these debts can more clearly be linked with goods that Canynges was supplying. On one occasion he petitioned the chancellor in an attempt to recover £51 from the executors of Thomas Lovesale of Kingston-upon-Hull who had bought merchandise from him. The transaction was complicated by the fact that Canynges had entered into an obligation on behalf of Lovesale with Vincenzo Cattaneo, a Lombard, which Canynges had subsequently made good himself. His mainpernors in Chancery on this occasion were two Bristol men, his half-brother Thomas Young, and John Joce. Another attempt to secure repayment of a debt led Canynges to pursue a case in the court of admiralty against a London fishmonger, John Waweton, although, as on so many other occasions he only managed to secure the temporary outlawry of his debtor, who subsequently obtained a royal pardon.23 C1/11/237; CPR, 1441-6, p. 230.

Canynges had inherited one third of his father’s holdings in Bristol which, at the time of the latter’s death, had comprised 22 shops, six tenements, three halls and five gardens, while outside the town he held a reversionary interest in a house in ‘Netherwer’ in Somerset. A rental compiled by the Bristol authorities in the early 1460s showed that Canynges held land in St. Thomas’s Street, for which he paid a nominal rent to the commonalty. By 1436 his holdings in Bristol and elsewhere in Gloucestershire were said to be worth £20 p.a.24 Bristol Wills (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. 1886), 25, 48, 77-78; Gt. Red Bk. Bristol (Bristol Rec. Soc. iv), 21; S.L. Thrupp, Merchant Class Med. London, 379. Although he was listed on the return made for the city of London, no property there was included in the assessment of his income, and the value of his acquisitions can only be guessed. Early in his career he was living in the Walbrook area of the city, but by 1451 he was being described as a resident of the parish of St. Dunstan in the East, where he held a tenement and two shops in Minchin Lane which subsequently passed to his eldest son, William. His links with this parish, and his service as alderman for the nearby Aldgate Ward, may well have prompted him to become a member of a fraternity dedicated to the Virgin in the church of All Hallows Barking. This attracted a number of wealthy staplers, as well as royal servants from the Tower as members. In 1441 it was the subject of a royal grant, enabling it to hold lands in mortmain, and the recipients, headed by the chancellor of the Exchequer John Somerset*, included Canynges, Hugh Wyche* and Henry Frowyk I*.25 CFR, xviii. 199; Ms. Archs. Grocers’ Co., ii. 175; Surv. London: All Hallows Barking, i. 13. Elsewhere in the city Canynges was not involved in many property transactions, indicating perhaps that he was investing his money elsewhere. He did sometimes act as a feoffee for others, doing so in 1448 when Thomas Catworth* conveyed property in Bucklersbury to a group of men which included Canynges, Richard Lee and John Young who 11 years later settled it on Joan Luttur, the widow of a grocer, now married to a fishmonger, Nicholas Drakes. At the same time he and his fellow feoffees were among the recipients of a gift of goods and chattels made by the latter.26 London hr 169/14, 177/2, 187/40, 208/10; CCR, 1454-61, p. 373. It also remains unclear what, if any, properties Canynges acquired on his marriage. This had certainly taken place well before July 1441 when the prior of Newark near Guildford granted the couple, and Margaret their daughter, a yearly rent of as much as £20 from the priory’s holdings within London.27 CCR, 1435-41, p. 485.

There is evidence to show that Canynges’s business dealings in East Anglia resulted in the acquisition of a certain amount of property at a distance from the capital. Following his death, his son William petitioned Chancery concerning the repeated attempts by one Thomas Bagger of Hadleigh in Suffolk forcibly to enter Canynges’s holdings there, which included a messuage and some 200 acres of land, resulting in the loss of goods, jewels and documents.28 C1/29/184. Nearer to London Canynges also acquired property at Chigwell in Essex, comprising a tenement called ‘The Lodge’ and 100 acres of arable land and 26 acres of meadow, which he purchased from Thomas Pynchon of Little Wakering for £180 in 1434. Subsequently, his grandson, also named Thomas, was forced to petition Chancery after Pynchon allegedly failed to deliver the title deeds and other evidences.29 CCR, 1429-35, p. 307; C1/128/28. Also in Essex, Canynges acted from 1445 to 1462 as a feoffee of the manor of Lyston Overall, by nomination of his business associate William Venour.30 CPR, 1441-6, p. 345; 1461-7, p. 228.

Like most wealthy London merchants, Canynges at various times was drawn into financial dealings with the Crown, although in his case these were on a fairly limited scale. At some point before March 1448 he lent the government the sum of £300 which was repaid through a licence enabling him to export woollen cloth; and in late July 1453 the Exchequer authorized the repayment by assignment of another loan, of 200 marks, which he had advanced earlier that month.31 DKR, xlviii. 379; E401/831, m. 34; E403/793, m. 15; W. Smith, ‘R. Finance and Politics, 1450-5’, (Manchester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1998), app. vi. He purported to have links with important members of the King’s council, for earlier, in the summer of 1445, he had claimed to have privileged access to Chancery as a ‘servant of the chancellor’, John Stafford, archbishop of Canterbury, although it is unclear precisely what his connexion with the prelate was.32 CFR, xvii. 320.

Nor do these vague links with the administration go far to illuminate Canynges’s political stance in the 1440s and 1450s. More is perhaps revealed from his involvement in the city politics. Although active in London from the early 1420s it was not until 1434 that Canynges was first appointed to an office in the city, that of collector of a parliamentary subsidy. Over the next few years he was appointed to a variety of city committees, a valuable way of gaining experience of London’s government prior to attaining higher office. In December 1439 he was chosen as one of the receivers of a £1,000 loan which London made to the Crown, while in November 1441, no doubt because of his business dealings, he was appointed to a committee established to look at the status of alien merchants in the capital.33 Jnl. 3, ff. 11, 13, 76v, 102, 115, 127, 188v; Cal. Letter Bk. London, K, 246. Precisely where he stood with regard to the political disturbances which beset the city that autumn remains ambiguous. A series of protests, led by radical elements within some of the artisan crafts, had recently found expression at the mayoral election, when Robert Clopton* was elected ahead of the tailor Ralph Holland. In April 1442 Canynges appeared before the court of aldermen claiming that he well knew who had made a ‘venomous bill’ against the aldermen. The fact that he himself denied any involvement with the ‘bill’ suggests that he was under suspicion. Significantly, his own initial bid to join the ranks of the aldermen at this time proved unsuccessful.34 Jnl. 3, ff. 133, 142; C.M. Barron, ‘Ralph Holland and the London Radicals’, in The Med. Town ed. Holt and Rosser, 168-77. Three months earlier he had attested the election of the city’s MPs for the first time, endorsing the return of a fellow grocer, William Cottesbroke*. The latter’s attempt to gain appointment as chamberlain of the city in September 1443 was to provoke further disturbances, in which Canynges also played an ambiguous part. At the election for chamberlain, popular support for Cottesbroke went unheard by the great and the good of the city who chose instead John Chichele, and in the course of a thorough investigation by the authorities plots were uncovered and allegations made against many of the conspirators by witnesses. On 16 Oct. Canynges gave vital evidence to the court of aldermen, in which he claimed that Cottesbroke had declared that a mayor was not mayor of those that did not choose him, and that those who were excluded from the election of the mayor could refuse to obey him. This went to the heart of the radicals’ grievances, which centred on the exclusion from elections of all those freemen who had not been personally summoned to attend.35 Jnl. 4, f. 10v. It remains unclear how Canynges could have to be in a position to hear Cottesbroke say those words, and his rebuttal of the earlier charge may well indicate that he was not above fraternizing with the conspirators.

Canynges’s standing in the city meant that he was more than able to withstand such slights to his character. On 19 Oct. 1445 he was narrowly chosen as alderman for the ward of Aldgate, defeating the mercer Geoffrey Feldyng* by nine votes to eight, and the following year he was chosen as one of the city’s four auditors. Meanwhile, in July 1446, he and his wife Elizabeth obtained a royal pardon, and it is possible that he was again having to defend himself against malicious allegations.36 C67/39, m. 35. On 15 Oct. that year, shortly after his promotion as auditor, he came before the court of aldermen once again to refute slanderous words, this time uttered by one John Drakys who accused him of being ‘an Irish knave, usurer and traitor to the King’. Drakys was sent to Newgate where he was ordered to stand in the stocks for one hour each day for three days, following which he was to go to prison for a year and then on his release beg Canynges for forgiveness on his knees. In the event, however, Canynges asked his fellow aldermen to pardon Drakys the imprisonment and stocks as long as he was led from Newgate to the church of St. Katherine Cree to ask forgiveness. He was then bound over in £40 not to speak ill of any alderman in future.37 Jnl. 4, f. 143v. There were also questions over Canynges’s respectability further afield. Thus, in early 1453 he and his brother William brought a suit before the justices of common pleas against the Gloucestershire lawyer Thomas Buckland*, ostensibly over a debt guaranteed by a bond sealed at London in November 1451. Buckland for his part claimed that he should not have to pay, since he had in fact made the bond under duress, while a prisoner of the Canynges brothers and their ‘coven’ at Gloucester, rather than at liberty in London.38 CP40/768, rot. 130.

By the end of the 1440s the Canynges and Young brothers occupied prominent positions in London and Bristol. Moreover, William Canynges and John Young had both established a connexion with the duke of York, for in 1448-9 they acted on the latter’s behalf in relation to a mortgage of property at Easton in Gloucestershire, property in which Thomas Young, an associate of the duke’s chamberlain, William Oldhall*, was to acquire a life interest. It was also in 1448 that Thomas Young first began acting as learned counsel for the Grocers’ Company, at a time when Thomas Canynges was coming towards the end of his first term as governor. Yet it is clear that despite being related to men with clear Yorkist connexions, Thomas himself does not appear to have forged any direct links with the duke or his circle during the late 1440s. His election as sheriff of London and Middlesex in the autumn of 1449 may not, therefore, have had any wider political significance, despite the growing prominence within the Grocers’ Company of elements which were increasingly disillusioned with the Lancastrian government.39 Nightingale, 492-4. His duties as sheriff were to prove extremely onerous, for in the summer of 1450 the city was overrun by Cade’s rebels. After the dust had settled, and the insurgents had been tracked down, Canynges and his fellow sheriff had the task of sending the heads and quarters of those executed to various parts of the city and to towns and cities throughout England. In June 1451, some months after leaving office, they successfully petitioned the King and his council for reimbursement of their extra expenses in connexion with this grisly task.40 PPC, vi. 107-9; E28/81/36.

In the meantime the Parliament of 1450 had been the scene of high drama when Thomas Young put forward a Commons’ motion for York to be adopted as Henry VI’s rightful heir. This must have this left the Canynges brothers and John Young feeling somewhat exposed, especially after Thomas was imprisoned. It is possible that John Young’s failure to become an alderman later that year was a calculated move by the court of aldermen in London to avoid attracting unwanted attention.41 Nightingale, 492-4. Canynges, however, appears to have continued much as before, with further appointments to civic committees occurring in the autum of 1451. Nevertheless, in September 1452 he obtained another royal pardon, which may once again indicate that he did not feel totally secure.42 Jnl. 5, f. 66; C67/40, m. 20. The significance of his election as mayor in October 1456 is difficult to assess. On one level it was, of course, no more than his due given ten years’ service as an alderman and the fact that he had held all the other principal offices. Yet it may also have had a political significance as a demonstration of the prominence of those within London’s merchant class who were less than enamoured with the Lancastrian government. By this time the staplers had struck a deal with the duke of York to allow the earl of Warwick to take up his position as captain of Calais, and so the interests of many of Canynges’s fellow grocers were now linked to the fortunes of the Yorkists. The following year, however, the position of the Canynges and Young brothers was to be undermined by a governmental inquiry which investigated commercial frauds and evasions of regulations. In December 1457, two months after the end of his mayoralty, Canynges appeared before the mayor of the Calais staple charged with shipping 272 sacks of wool in the names of three Italian merchants to Zeeland where it had been sold, contrary to staple regulations. He did not try to defend himself but instead obtained a royal pardon.43 E159/234, recorda Hil. rot. 14. Canynges was not himself a staple merchant, and so these allegations, whether true or not, set him against many of his fellow grocers who were members of the staple. The timing of this allegation might well indicate a deliberate plan by elements within the Exchequer to discredit him and his family.44 Nightingale, 508.

In view of these events, Canynges’s election as an MP to the Parliament of 1459, which had been summoned specifically for the attainder of the Yorkist lords, is difficult to explain. Shortly before the assembly met at Coventry the city government was concerned enough about how London was viewed to send a delegation to the King to assure him of its support. Canynges’s three fellow Members were all prominent citizens, but unlike him they were not tainted by association, however distant, with pro-Yorkist interests. The election of Canynges could therefore either be an indication of the independence of mind of London’s government, or else a reflection of the fact that Canynges was not himself regarded as a potential liability.45 Jnl. 6, ff. 160, 166. The events of the following year saw the pendulum swing firmly in favour of the Yorkists, following their victory at the battle of Northampton. A Parliament was summoned to meet in the autumn, and shortly before it met Canynges and John Young were chosen jointly as governors of the Grocers’ Company, which had by this time advanced money to the Yorkist earls.46 Nightingale, 514-15. The choice of two men to serve in this office was highly unusual and could perhaps be seen as a ‘statement’ by the Grocers of their political allegiance. Less dramatic, perhaps, was the possibility that Canynges, then aged about 63, had fallen ill, for on 5 Dec. 1460 he came before the court of aldermen asking to be exonerated from his aldermanry on the grounds of infirmity. The reaction of his fellow aldermen was not sympathetic, however, for it was decided that he had not given sufficient reason and so should continue in office. Canynges tried again the following month and on 15 Jan. was finally allowed to leave office, but only after paying a fine of £40 for his ‘contumacy and disobedience’.47 Jnl. 6, ff. 279v, 286.

It seems that he may genuinely have been ailing, for by the summer of 1463 he was dead. His will does not survive, but he did evidently draft such a document, appointing as his executors his widow Elizabeth and his brother William.48 CP40/821, rot. 447; 823, rot. 397. He was survived by two sons, William and John, and by a daughter Elizabeth. William, the eldest, had died by June 1478 when his widow (another Elizabeth) and their son, Thomas, quitclaimed their right in Canynges’s property in Minchin Lane to John Tate.49 CPR, 1461-7, p. 381; CCR, 1461-8, p. 367; London hr 208/10; CP40/818, rot. 377. Canynges’s daughter, who married the draper John Holden, later acquired extensive property in Bristol under the terms of the will of her uncle William.50 CCR, 1476-85, no. 971. Canynges’s widow, Elizabeth, did not survive her husband for long. Before the end of 1466 her own executors (John Young, John Canynges and William Cammell) were embroiled in litigation over her affairs, as well as those of her deceased husband.51 CP40/821, rot. 447.