GYMBER, Henry

While never apparently a Member of Parliament, Gymber warrants attention, because his attempt to gain election as a knight of the shire for Huntingdonshire in 1450 caused one of the better known electoral disputes of the fifteenth century.5 Although given that the county’s knights of the shire in the last three Parls. of Hen. VI’s reign are unknown, it is conceivable that he succeeded in entering the Commons at a later date. Scorned by his opponents during the election as ‘not of gentell birth’, and so ineligible to enter the Commons by statute of 1445,6 PROME, xi. 499-501. he was a lawyer of obscure background whose profession enabled him to better himself. The election controversy of 1450 was something of a leitmotiv for his career, for his dealings in the land market and his attempts to assert his wife’s claims to her first husband’s lands also encountered opposition. Evidence for Gymber’s place of birth and parents is lacking, although very probably he was a native of Huntingdonshire. Among his feoffees were his brother, John Gymber, vicar of St. Neots in that county from 1450 to 1468, and another kinsman, also John Gymber, a resident of its parish of Easton.7 C1/49/6; G.C. Gorham, History Eynesbury and St. Neot’s, pp. 175, clxix; Trans. Cambs. and Hunts. Arch. Soc. iii. 193. Furthermore, it is possible that Thomas Gymber of Ellington, a parish neighbouring Easton, was his father.8 CP25(1)/94/34/2.

There is no evidence for Gymber prior to the later 1440s, and the earliest known reference to him is a plea roll entry of 1447. This relates to a suit that he and his clerical brother John brought against a poulterer for committing a trespass against them in Buckinghamshire,9 KB27/746, rot. 40. but he is not known to have acquired any interests in that county. His principal investment was ‘Lytelberies’, the manor in Diddington which became his main residence. He bought it from Ralph Bagley in 1448, a transaction backed up by a formal conveyance of the property to him by Bagley and his wife early in the following year. At about the same time he acquired lands in Ellington, a few miles to the north.10 VCH Hunts. ii. 70; CP25(1)/94/36/33-34. Yet the Diddington purchase may have involved sharp practice, because later Ralph’s son, Thomas Bagley, citing an entail, would assert a claim to it.

It is possible that it was Gymber’s newly acquired status as a landowner that prompted him to stand as a knight of the shire in Huntingdonshire’s parliamentary election of 1450. He was no doubt qualified in landed terms to do so, not least because his opponents during the election made no claims to the contrary, although they were quite ready to sneer at his origins. It is almost certain, nevertheless, that he had the support of one or more men of influence. The county court met on 17 Oct. but ended in disarray when Gymber sought election, despite the fact that Robert Stonham* and John Styuecle*, both of whom were of the upper gentry and household esquires of Henry VI, had put themselves forward as candidates. In the event, Styuecle and Stonham secured the county’s seats, after they and their supporters had sent the government a certificate giving their version of what had happened. According to the certificate, on election day 124 named freeholders and over 300 ‘good communers’ of the county had chosen the two household men while Gymber had enjoyed the backing of 70 or so ‘freholders comoners’ whom ‘dyvers [unnamed] gentilmen of other shires’ had incited to support him. The numbers participating in the election were perhaps exceptional, but it occurred at a time of political turmoil, in the aftermath of the fall of the duke of Suffolk and Cade’s revolt. During the 1450 elections, the duke of York ‘laboured’ to ensure the election to Parliament of men sympathetic to his views. He spent some time in East Anglia in October 1450, so it is conceivable that Gymber had been one of his candidates.11 C219/16/1; J.G. Edwards, ‘Hunts. Parlty. Election of 1450’, in Essays presented to B. Wilkinson ed. Sandquist and Powicke, 383-95; P.A. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, 85; M. Keen, Eng. in the Later Middle Ages, 439.

In spite of the rebuff he had received from most of the leading gentry of Huntingdonshire in 1450, Gymber went on to enjoy a career in local government, his legal qualifications ensuring him a place on the quorums of the Huntingdonshire bench and several commissions of gaol delivery. In 1453 he acted as an attorney for Everard Digby*, in a suit in which Digby stood charged of maintenance.12 CP40/771, rot. 322. His legal expertise probably also explains why an embattled litigant, John Browe*, chose him to act as a mainpernor in 1456.13 CCR, 1454-61, p. 208. Gymber’s entry into local government may have coincided with his marriage, for it was about this time that the widow of one of the Flores of Oakham, Rutland, became his wife. Possibly, they met each other through Browe, who was from that county, but it was no doubt due to his marriage that he came to serve on the Rutland bench in the late 1450s. Elizabeth’s first husband Robert, the son of the former Speaker Roger Flore* by his second wife Cecily, appears to have died in the early 1450s.14 Robert disappears from view after attesting the return of Rutland’s knights of the shire to the Parl. of Oct. 1450: C219/16/1. Although Roger Flore’s heir was Thomas Flore*, his eldest son by his previous marriage, he had provided generously for Robert and his other younger sons, to the grievance of his first-born. When Cecily remarried, Robert received the Lincolnshire manor of Stainby, to hold during her lifetime. By means of a settlement of 1412, he was also awarded the reversion of two other manors, at Whitwell and Little Hambleton in Rutland, after her death.15 C1/16/124; CP25(1)/192/8/11. Through her first marriage, Elizabeth had acquired rights in all three of these properties but Thomas Flore claimed they should not have come to his half-brother in the first place. As a result, Gymber became embroiled in litigation with Thomas, against whom he and Elizabeth filed a bill in Chancery in about 1460. They complained that Thomas had taken possession of Stainby with the assistance of William Sywerd, master of the Oakham almshouse where the deeds relating to that manor were kept, so contravening Robert’s will, which had directed that Elizabeth should have the property while Cecily Flore lived.16 C1/16/124. It is not known when Cecily died, but she outlived Robert. The Gymbers also had problems at Little Hambleton and Whitwell. Late in Henry VI’s reign and the early years of Edward IV, they pursued a suit in the court of common pleas against Thomas for excluding them from Elizabeth’s share of Little Hambleton.17 CP40/798, rot. 149; 805, rot. 131; 808, rot. 22d ; 812, rot. 2. The basis of her claim is unclear, for Cecily had a life interest in them, meaning that Robert may never have had seisin. Whether the couple ever recovered her dower lands is open to question, and Gymber remained active in the land market. He acquired a messuage and lands in Glatton and Sawtry in north-west Huntingdonshire in 1465,18 CP25(1)/94/37/1. and other holdings at Ashby Folville and Ashby-de-la-Zouche in Leicestershire at an unknown date.19 PCC 16 Godyn.

Elsewhere in Leicestershire, Gymber was a feoffee of the manor of Rolleston by June 1460, shortly before its owner, Sir John Popham*, gave it to the Carthusian order.20 E326/4531, 8775, 11894. Gymber enjoyed a close relationship with Popham, who was lord of six manors in Huntingdonshire, and the knight, who died in 1463, appointed him an executor of his will.21 CP40/821, rot. 282. If Gymber had enjoyed the support of the duke of York when standing for election to the Commons in 1450, it is possible that Popham, a resident of Hampshire and who had served York in France, had been one of the ‘dyvers gentilmen of other shires’ who had backed his candidature.

In his later years, Gymber continued to participate in local government. He was also active in his role as executor of Sir John Popham, whom in the event he did not long outlive. Although not appointed to any further ad hoc commissions after 1459, he remained on the bench in Huntingdonshire until his death, and served briefly as a j.p. in Cambridgeshire in the early 1460s. In July 1463, just three months after Popham’s death, he and two of his fellow executors, Robert Stonham and Henry Asshborn, lent the Crown £200, presumably from the knight’s estate.22 E403/830, m. 1. Later that decade, they and their fellows, Maurice Berkeley*, Robert Burton and William Baron*, brought suits in the common pleas against three of Popham’s debtors, Thomas and Edward Hasylrygge and William Browning I*. At least one of these suits was still ongoing when Gymber himself died in early 1467.23 CP40/821, rots. 282, 498d, 598d; 829, rot. 279. Gymber’s widow, who settled at Stamford in Lincolnshire after his death, comfortably outlived him since she was still alive in July 1488.24 Leics. RO, Sherard mss, DE1431/479; CP40/841, rot. 282.

At his death, Gymber was childless. Possibly Elizabeth had passed the age of child bearing when they married, or perhaps she was unable to have children since there were likewise none from her first marriage. Gymber’s will was dated 12 Feb. 1467 and proved two days later.25 PCC 16 Godyn. Although he made it in London, he chose to be buried in the church at Diddington. He left 40s. towards the repair of another Huntingdonshire church, that of Easton, and made bequests to his ‘kinsmen’, William Gymber and Thomas Hille, a London grocer whom he appointed supervisor of the will, and his ‘cousin’, Agnes Gymber. To his widow he assigned the residue of his goods and debts, to dispose of for the good of his soul, and appointed her and his brother John, the vicar of St. Neots, his executors. Gymber’s instructions as to his lands reveal that, besides his properties in Huntingdonshire and Leicestershire, he owned the manor of Tilbrook, Bedfordshire,26 By no means a certain identification: the will refers to ‘Tykbrook’, and the descent of Tilbrook, one of the manors in the Beds. parish of that name, is obscure for some 50 years after 1428: VCH Beds. iii. 173. bought from John Lucas, and lands at ‘Forth’ in the same county. He assigned the ‘Forth’ lands, along with ‘Lytelberies’ in Diddington and his holdings at Ashby Folville and Ashby de la Zouche in Leicestershire and Hail Weston in Huntingdonshire to Elizabeth Gymber for life. As for Tilbrook, he left directions for its immediate disposal, with the money raised going towards paying his legacies and pious uses, for the good of the souls of himself, Sir John Popham and unnamed friends and benefactors.27 PCC 16 Godyn.

The will also reveals that Gymber had encountered problems over his title to ‘Lytelberies’, for he asked that lawyers should check the deeds relating to that manor. By the end of his life, the circumstances in which he acquired it must have troubled him, since he provided for Thomas Bagley to receive an annuity of six marks in the future, even if the lawyers found that he had bought ‘Lytelberies’ without offence to his conscience and Thomas’s rights. This was not enough for Bagley, who went to Chancery in the early 1470s to sue Gymber’s widow and a couple of his feoffees.28 C1/38/256. Bagley was not the only claimant to the manor, since he faced rivals in John Gymber and the lord of another manor at Diddington, William Taylard†, both of whom pursued their own claims against Elizabeth in the same court. The authorities intervened in the controversy in May 1470, by seizing the manor into the King’s hands, although Elizabeth managed to regain possession in the following July, albeit only temporarily on farm from the Crown.29 CFR, xx. 266. John Gymber, probably John of Easton, styled himself Henry’s ‘cousin and heir’ in the bill he submitted to the chancellor. He accused Elizabeth of having covertly obtained the manor in fee before conveying it away to feoffees to hold to her use. A note on the bill’s dorse records that the court subsequently dismissed Elizabeth sine die with John’s consent, perhaps after he had withdrawn his claim.30 C1/41/183.

While the exact date of John Gymber’s bill is unknown, Taylard brought his case after the intervention of the Crown. In a bill of late 1470 or early 1471, he accused Elizabeth of breaching an undertaking to sell the manor to him. In response, she denied entering into any final agreement while admitting to communicating with him about a possible sale.31 C1/15/342; 44/84. She was still at odds with Bagley when Taylard began proceedings against her, although the older dispute came to end a few months later, in July 1471, through the arbitration or assistance of John Chedworth, bishop of Lincoln, William Hussey* and none other than Taylard himself. The settlement reached obliged Bagley to recognize Elizabeth’s possession of the manor in return for a payment of £40 and an interest in a hospice in St. Neots.32 CCR, 1468-76, no. 735. Whether or not an outcome denying ‘Lytelberies’ to Bagley was his work, Taylard managed subsequently to acquire the manor, of which he died seised in 1505. Like Henry Gymber, he was buried in Diddington parish church.33 CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 319; VCH Hunts. ii. 272; N. Pevsner, Buildings of Eng.: Beds., Huntingdon and Peterborough, 235.

Another dispute connected with Gymber’s estate came before the chancellor in 1473. The plaintiff, Humphrey Starkey, the recorder of London, asserted that Elizabeth Gymber had sold to him her life interest, along with the reversion, of the holdings at Hail Weston. He complained that he had been unable to make good his purchase because her late husband’s feoffees, among them his brother John (by now the former vicar of St. Neots), John’s namesake of Easton and Thomas Gymber, citizen and ironmonger of London, had refused to release these lands to him.34 C1/49/6.