KEYNSHAM, John

Keynsham must have been a young man when elected to Parliament: despite the gap of over 20 years between his election as an MP and his appointment as one of the bailiffs of Cambridge, it is impossible to prove that there are two men conflated here. A borough treasurers’ account and extracts from his no longer extant will provide some evidence of his property interests in the town. Listed among the receipts in the account, for the year 1493-4, is 12d. received from Keynsham for a certain footbridge over the King’s ditch against the ‘nuns’ close’, although it is not clear whether this was a rent he paid the corporation of the borough.3 C.H. Cooper, Annals Cambridge, i. 243. The directions that Keynsham gave in his will (of unknown date) ensured that succeeding generations of townsmen would commemorate him. In it he left his house in Bridge Street to Barnwell priory after his wife Joan’s death, on condition that the prior and convent kept an obit for the couple’s souls on the Monday following 7 July every year, with placebo and dirige in the evening and a sung mass on the following day. Furthermore, he directed that the mayor and corporation of Cambridge should oversee each obit and take part in the ‘jonchett’ that was to take place in the priory after the dirige. To cover the cost to the town Keynsham and his wife surrendered their booths in Stourbridge Fair to its treasurers. The supper survived the dissolution of the priory and the townsmen were still observing it in Charles II’s reign.4 Gray, 20; Cooper, 259.