CONY, Walter

Probably originally from outside Bishop’s Lynn, Cony became a freeman of the borough on 16 July 1438, having served an apprenticeship under Thomas Spicer*.9 KL/C 7/3, f. 90v. Identified as a merchant and brewer in a royal pardon he obtained in October 1455,10 C67/41, m. 19. he was involved in the Baltic trade. In the early 1440s, he and 23 other Lynn merchants complained to the borough council about illegal charges and extortions imposed upon them by officials in the king of Denmark’s territories, prompting the council to send a deputation to that king’s court.11 KL/C 7/3, f. 153v. Within England, Cony appears to have had business links with Norwich, given that on one occasion he sold goods worth £75 to the son and namesake of William Barley*, a merchant from that city. Following this transaction, which probably took place in the late 1460s, Barley disappeared, having handed over no more than £30. Cony reacted by suing John Qwyncy, Barley’s hapless surety, who in turn sought protection from the court of Chancery.12 C1/46/356.

Within a decade of becoming a freeman, Cony served a term as a chamberlain in Lynn, often a preliminary office for those seeking positions of higher responsibility within the borough, and he gained admission to the 24, the higher council that dominated local affairs, in May 1449. He subsequently served five times as mayor, and he became alderman of the Trinity guild in 1465, an office of far greater importance than his previous position of master of the lesser guild of Corpus Christi. It was in his capacity as alderman that he was obliged to take over the mayoralty for a fifth term, following the death in office of Thomas Leighton in December 1476.13 KL/C 7/4, p. 374. For Cony this was an unwelcome development. Previously, when elected to his third term as mayor in 1469, he had complained that he was already busy with his duties as alderman,14 Ibid. 272. and his fellow burgesses had promised him upon his assuming the mayoralty once more in 1474 that he should never have to serve in the office again.15 Ibid. 328. Cony’s second term as mayor was perhaps his most difficult one, coming as it did in a period of great political uncertainty. In January 1461, he and the rest of the corporation felt obliged to site guns for the town’s defence and they faced demands to provide men for Henry VI’s army.16 Ibid. 145, 147. Circumstances had changed three months later, shortly after Edward IV had seized the throne, for the new government placed him on a commission for the arrest of Sir Thomas Tuddenham*, one of the leading adherents of the Lancastrian cause in East Anglia. In November 1474, during his fourth term as mayor, Cony and other burgesses discussed how to receive the King, who was proposing to visit Lynn.17 Ibid. 332. Later in the same term, he was among those whom Richard Ive sued in Chancery. In his bill of July 1475, Ive stated that he had seized the person and goods of an enemy alien, Bertram Seint Julyan, at Lynn, and handed the keys of the cellars where this merchandise (wines, fish and honey) was stored to Cony for safekeeping. Since then, he went on to claim, the mayor and his co-defendants had denied him access to the goods, despite the fact that he possessed rights to them by virtue of his seizure.18 C1/47/42.

Like other leading burgesses, Cony was often busy with tasks not specifically related to any particular office in the borough. In 1456, for example, he arbitrated in a dispute about a tenement, and he represented the borough in discussions with its feudal lord, the bishop of Norwich two decades later. He was also one of those who negotiated with the Crown in 1473, when the corporation was seeking the right to hold a fair, and among the merchants who met the royal council in London on another occasion that year, to discuss England’s relations with the Hanseatic League.19 KL/C 7/4, 82, 270, 317, 356. Cony was well qualified to take part in such discussions, since in the previous decade the Crown had sent him to the continent to meet representatives of the League on its behalf. Originally, the diet or meeting was to have occurred at Hamburg in the midsummer of 1464, but an outbreak of plague and political problems in the Baltic led to its cancellation. Cony and his fellow envoys, Richard Caunton, archdeacon of Salisbury, Dr. Henry Sharp and Henry Bermyngeham*, another prominent Lynn merchant, had reached Utrecht when the diet was postponed, and after waiting several weeks there they returned home. For their services Caunton and Sharp, the leaders of the mission, were granted daily expenses of 20s.; Cony and Bermyngeham were paid at half that rate. A new diet was called for July the following year, and on 11 June 1465 Cony and two other members of the previous embassy, Sharp and Bermyngeham, were commissioned to travel to Hamburg with James Goldwell, dean of Salisbury, and (Sir) John Cheyne II*. As with the previous embassy, they had authority to treat with the king of Denmark, although the Crown also gave them the power to conclude a treaty with the king of Poland as well. Again, things did not go entirely to plan since the envoys were still in England on 13 July and difficulties between them and the League’s representatives soon arose when they finally reached Hamburg in September. A committee of learned men who could converse in Latin helped to solve the first of these, the language barrier, but the second, namely the demands of Lűbeck and Bremen for immediate compensation for injuries that their merchants had suffered at the hands of the English, proved insurmountable. This was because Bermyngeham and his fellows lacked the authority to discuss that matter, even though they were empowered to sign a peace treaty. All attempts at compromise failed and the diet broke up in early October, although the English party did not return home completely empty handed, since they had managed to conclude a treaty of alliance with representatives of Christian I of Denmark.20 Scofield, i. 327-83, 390-2; C76/148, m. 11; 149, m. 18; P. Chaplais, English Med. Diplomatic Practice, ii. nos. 56-58.

Unlike his fellow envoy, Bermyngeham, Cony sat for Lynn in only one Parliament, that of 1455. He and Henry Thoresby* were elected to the Commons on 3 July and received a warrant of attorney from the corporation two days later, when a lawsuit in which Cony was engaged with Walter Monk, master of the hospital of St. John the Baptist in Lynn, was suspended. Cony would also have sat in the first Parliament of Edward IV’s reign, had circumstances allowed. This assembly was to have opened in the summer that year, but the King postponed it in order to deal with armed opposition in northern England. By then, the electors of Lynn had returned Thoresby and William Caus† as their MPs, but at a fresh election in September they elected Cony and Bermyngeham instead. Following another postponement, they met again in October to return Bermyngeham and Simon Pygot*. Cony was involved in at least two other parliamentary elections, since he was one of those who elected Lynn’s MPs to the Commons of November 1449, and in October 1470, during his third term as mayor, he nominated four of the 12 electors who chose Bermyngeham and Robert Braybrooke† to represent the borough in the Parliament of that year.21 KL/C 7/3, f. 269v; 7/4, pp. 54, 55, 73, 159, 162, 167, 286-7.

By the early 1470s, Cony thoughts were turning to the hereafter. In this period he built a tomb chapel dedicated to the Holy Trinity (although commonly known as ‘Cony’s chapel’) in St. Margaret’s, the parish church of Lynn, and erected the transept in the same church. He also began work on clerestories on both sides of the nave, a project still in progress when he died on 29 Sept. 1479. It would appear that he died childless, although his then wife, Margaret, had a daughter by a previous marriage. His will has not survived, but he is known to have appointed as his executors Edmund Westhorpe, John Burbage† and John Burton, who completed his building projects at St. Margaret’s in 1481. Cony also left £20 towards the completion of the church’s north-west bell tower, but the spire intended for the tower was never built and some years later the executors presented the church with a silver-gilt cross and banner instead. The brass on Cony’s tombstone, an ornate construction of Purbeck marble, depicted a man in the costume of a burgess or merchant with a rosary and a purse attached to his belt. Removed to make room for another burial in 1701, the stone was returned without its brass during later restoration work on what was left of his chapel. Besides his tomb, Cony’s house was another reminder to future generations of burgesses of the position that he had held in their borough. A large and ornate timber-framed building built in the middle of the fifteenth century, it stood on the corner of the high street facing St. Margaret’s until it was demolished in 1816.22 C1/57/198; H.J. Hillen, Hist. Lynn, i. 220-2; W. Taylor, Antiqs. King’s Lynn, 23, 49-50 and plate between pp. 150 and 151. His other properties in the borough included several tenements and messuages and an inn called Le Beer.23 King’s Lynn bor. recs., accts. scabins Trin. guild, 1468-9, 1474-5, 1478-9, 1483-4, 1493-4, KL/C 38/22, 23, 25, 27, 28; deeds, KL/C 50/92, 207, 219, 366; C1/57/197. It is possible that the evidently wealthy Cony resorted to an age-old method to conceal some of his riches. An inquisition of May 1482 found that within a month of his death John Burbage, one of his executors, and the chaplain Nicholas Emneth had dug up the threshold of the chapel in his messuage in Chequer Street and removed 1,500 gold coins buried three feet down. It is impossible to say if the men, whom the Crown pardoned a few weeks later, were recovering the coins on behalf of Cony’s estate or in search of personal enrichment.24 CPR, 1476-85, p. 303; D.M. Owen, Making of King’s Lynn, 429.