COLAYN, John

It seems likely that Colayn held a local office of some kind in Portsmouth early in 1435. He was among the eight townsmen named in the commission set up on 4 Mar. that year, who together with ‘other malefactors’ were alleged to have asaulted and resisted with force and arms certain commissaries of John, duke of Bedford, the admiral of England, in the execution of their duties in the town. Evidently, the fracas had arisen from a dispute over jurisdiction. The sheriff of Hampshire and his fellow commissioners were ordered to arrest and imprison the culprits, but whether they did so does not appear, and it was Bedford’s men rather than Colayn and his associates who were indicted before the j.p.s. a few weeks later.3 CPR, 1429-36, p. 471; C1/45/53; C244/12, no. 24. Colayn subsequently served as one of the two constables of Portsmouth, and may have been holding the post at the time of his election to Parliament in 1447. On that occasion his sureties for attendance in the Commons were John Carpenter I* and Robert Abraham*.4 C219/15/4.

Colayn appeared as a juror at Portsmouth in October 1448 when Chester Herald of Arms (John Chester alias Wryxworth*) made inquiries into the whereabouts of a cargo of 39 tuns of wine, wrongfully taken at sea and brought into the harbour.5 C145/313/8. He himself made a living through trade, although little is recorded of his commercial dealings.6 HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 206, identified him with the owner of Le Mary of Rye, whose shipmaster was allowed in 1451 to have £23 for wages due to him from the King out of the customs of Portsmouth. In fact, this was Plymouth (CPR, 1446-52, p. 447), and it is very unlikely that the two were the same person. During the Easter term of 1450 he brought suits in the court of common pleas against another merchant and a shipman from the Isle of Wight for debts amounting to £13 6s. 8d.,7 CP40/757, rot. 239d. and early in 1458 he came to the same court to respond to a suit brought by one Richard Baker, who claimed that Colayn owed him 51s. 8d. under an obligation entered at Poole 12 years before.8 CP40/788, rot. 305d. Colayn is not recorded after the Michaelmas term of the same year when as outgoing bailiff of Portsmouth he appeared in the Exchequer to account for the town’s fee farm.