PAYN, John II

The identification of the man who represented Launceston in Parliament in 1453 presents some problems, not least on account of the existence of several John Payns in Cornwall in the fifteenth century, men whose activities cannot under all circumstances be distinguished. In the second decade of the century there were two related men who resided at Trevarrick in the parish of St. Issey, and in the 1450s and 1460s there were two men of this name at South Bodiniell (near Liskeard) and at Atte Stone (in Duloe parish).1 Cornw. Feet of Fines (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. 1950), ii. 897; JUST1/129/8, m. 1; C67/41, m. 28; 45, m. 9. By the 1450s the Payns who had previously lived at Looe in Cornw. had established themselves as merchants at Southampton: CP40/781, rot. 241.

Further afield, there was also a Chancery clerk, active in the 1450s and 1460s, who was regularly employed as an attorney by the gentry, clergy and nobility of the south-west, albeit also by their counterparts from other regions of England.2 C254/147/17, 35; 150/13; 151/66; CPR, 1452-61, p. 144. It is possible that this man was the John Payn ‘of Devon’ who in November 1449 found mainprise at the Exchequer for Henry Holand, duke of Exeter.3 CFR, xviii. 147. It may have been the same John Payn who stood surety for John Ritte*, one of the burgesses for Totnes, at the Devon elections of 1453: C219/16/2. If so, there is a remote possibility that it was he who sat for Launceston in 1453, when many of the Cornish boroughs returned retainers of the duke. What makes this seem unlikely, is that Launceston, although less wealthy than neighbouring Bodmin, had a tradition of returning local men. Certainly, Payn’s colleague in the Commons of 1453 was William Skenock*, a lawyer and former under sheriff of Cornwall, who had previously represented Launceston in 1437.

The balance of probability would thus suggest that the man who sat in the Commons in 1453 was also local, and he may in fact have been the John Payn from Duloe, who was perhaps connected with (Sir) John Colshull*, one of the Cornish shire knights of 1453, who owned lands in that parish. This man, along with his namesake from South Bodiniell and another kinsman, came into conflict with the law at some point prior to the autumn of 1462 when their sureties in a lawsuit, who included Edward Potte* of Duloe, sued out a royal pardon.4 C67/45, m. 9. It may have been John Payn of South Bodiniell who served on juries at Liskeard in 1446, but it was almost certainly a younger man whom Richard Coryton of West Newton (in St. Mellion) killed there with a blow to the head with a cudgel on 25 Sept. 1490: SC2/160/29, rot. 5; KB9/389/65-6.