PYNNE, John

A merchant, Pynne was active at Yarmouth by 1420.4 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll 1419-20, Y/C 4/129, m. 3. First appointed to a term as a bailiff of the borough in September 1424, he was elected to his initial Parliament before the same term had finished. Bailiff of Yarmouth five times in all, he represented the borough in at least six Parliaments, three of which (1431, 1432 and 1437) coincided with periods when he was bailiff. The return for the last of these Parliaments has not survived but a local court roll records that he was one of the men elected in 1439.5 Ibid. Y/C 4/148, m. 15, which also records that the assembly was dissolved on 2 Mar. 1440, later than previously thought. Later, in September 1442, he made a release of all personal actions and quarrels that he had brought against the corporation for various sums, including parliamentary wages, it owed to him.6 Ibid. 1440-1, Y/C 4/149, m. 20d.

During his second term as bailiff, Pynne participated in one of the disputes that frequently marred relations between Great Yarmouth and the Cinque Ports. The quarrel features in a petition that the Ports’ bailiffs at the Yarmouth herring fair of 1430, John Adam*, William Broughton*, Stephen Alby* and Thomas Carpenter*, submitted to the Crown in the following year, probably during the Parliament of 1431. Like Pynne, all were Members of that assembly, although the petition, addressed to the King alone rather than the King in Parliament, does not feature on the Parliament roll. Adams and his associates complained that the authorities at Yarmouth had prevented them from exercising their rightful jurisdiction in the town and had obstructed fishermen from the Ports attending the fair. The petitioners also alleged that Pynne, then the provost or senior bailiff at Yarmouth, and another local burgess, Robert Cupper*, had led an armed assault against them on 12 Oct. 1430. They requested that Pynne and Cupper, along with Pynne’s co-bailiff, Richard Ellis†, should appear before the King’s Council to answer for their actions, although with what result is unknown.7 SC8/296/14753-4.

The various sources relating to Pynne’s mercantile interests show that he owned two or more quays at Great Yarmouth, that he was involved in the overseas trade and that he dealt in grain and salt among other commodities.8 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls 1428-9, 1432-3, 1446-8, 1453-4, 1464-5, Y/C 4/137, m. 12d; 141, m. 12d; 153, m. 16; 154, m. 17; 160, m. 9; 169, m. 17; E122/194/9, m. 5d. Ventures abroad were not without risk, and in 1440 nine ships from the Low Countries attempted to intercept and capture five other vessels which Pynne and others had loaded with salt in the Bay of Biscay. In November that year, while the English ships lay off the Isle of Wight, the Crown commissioned the mayor and bailiffs of Southampton and a royal serjeant-at-arms to arrest the would-be assailants.9 CPR, 1436-41, p. 502. Ironically, one of Pynne’s tenants at Great Yarmouth a few years earlier had been a ‘Ducheman’, and in February 1447 he and his son, Robert, would stand surety for a ‘shipper’ from Zeeland in the borough court.10 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls 1433-4, 1446-7, Y/C 4/142, m. 14d; 153, m. 7d. In August 1448 he and Ralph Lampet* used the vessel of Reyner Johnsone of Kampen, Germany, to ship out a cargo made up of fish, wood and other merchandise.11 E122/194/9, m. 5d.

It is likely that a couple of lawsuits heard in the court of common pleas at Westminster earlier in the same decade also related to Pynne’s business activities. First, in November 1440, he incurred an outlawry in Hampshire for failing to answer the prominent Southampton merchant William Nicholl in a plea of debt. Arrested and brought into court in the following spring, Pynne was able to call upon the East Anglian lawyer, William Jenney*, to act as a surety on his behalf. In due course he succeeded in overturning the action on the basis that Nicholl’s original writ had incorrectly referred to him as of ‘Old Yarmouth’.12 CP40/721, rot. 136d. Pynne was also the defendant in the second lawsuit, an action brought by Sir John Fastolf, lord of several manors at Caister near Yarmouth. In pleadings of Easter term 1444, the knight sued the MP for £20, citing a bond for that amount that the latter had entered into with him in London in March 1432. Pynne responded by producing a release of all demands and actions that he had subsequently received from Fastolf’s then receiver, John Kirtling.13 CP40/733, rot. 138d.

Late in life, Pynne incurred the displeasure of his fellow burgesses, since a leet court at Yarmouth amerced him £10 in June 1447, for delivering the borough’s ‘common measure’ to the town of Lowestoft without authorization.14 Gt. Yarmouth ct. rolls 1446-7, 1448-9, Y/C 4/153, m. 16d; 155, m. 16. At the end of the same decade, Pynne drew up his will, dated 6 Dec. 1449. Seeking burial in the churchyard of St. Nicholas in Great Yarmouth, he left sums of money to the high altar and fabric of the same church and to several local religious orders and institutions. He also provided for the repair of the town gates. To his wife, Alice, he bequeathed all his household utensils, jewels and moveable goods, except a piece of plate and two beds. To his daughter, Margery, who had married Adam Wellis of Yarmouth, he left £10 6s. 8d. He named his son Robert and the prior of Yarmouth as his executors.15 Reg. Aleyn, f. 46. Three days after making the will, which was not proved until the following 17 Nov., Pynne and his wife appeared in the borough court to enrol two deeds, both dated October 1445. These concerned conveyances whereby the couple had settled various properties which had belonged to Alice’s former husband, Bartholomew Drayton, upon themselves for their lives, with remainder to Pynne’s son, Robert, and Alice’s daughter, Rose. Robert later married Rose, so they cannot have been brother and sister and the MP must have had an earlier wife.16 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll Y/C 4/156, m. 8d.

Just before he died, Pynne was obliged to answer a lawsuit in the common pleas. In pleadings of Michaelmas term 1450, a London merchant named Thomas Niche alleged that Pynne owed him 40s. for a butt of malmsey wine he had sold to the MP in April 1448. Pynne responded by obtaining licence to negotiate with Niche outside the court until early in the new year, only to die in the meantime. Niche likewise sued Pynne’s son Robert at Westminster in the same Michaelmas term. By means of a separate action, he claimed that Robert had failed to pay him for wine purchased – again in London – in February 1448. In this suit he sought the greater sum of £7 13s., for one butt of malmsey and one of the much rarer and more expensive ‘Tyre’ wine.17 CP40/759, rots. 348d, 350d; S. Rose, Wine Trade in Med. Europe, 83.

The MP’s widow, Alice, drew up her own will on 4 Sept. 1451, seeking burial in the churchyard of St. Nicholas – but beside Bartholomew Drayton rather than Pynne – and appointing as her executors Thomas Grene and Nicholas Drayton, her son by her earlier marriage. She appears to have survived for another two years, for the will was not proved until 26 Oct. 1453.18 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll Y/C 4/160, m. 9. On the following 11 Nov. Grene, acting as her executor, conveyed two plots of land, along with a ‘Fysshous’ and ‘Berghous’ to Robert Pynne, his wife Rose and another John Pynne.19 Ibid. 1469-70, Y/C 4/174, m. 9d; deed of 1453, Y/C 45/13. It is possible that Alice had married three times in all, since ‘Alice, wife of John Pynne’ is described as the former wife and executrix of Thomas Covehithe in the borough’s court roll for 1439-40.20 Gt. Yarmouth ct. roll Y/C 4/148, m. 4d. On the other hand, Covehithe’s widow may have been another woman altogether and her then husband a namesake of the MP, perhaps the John who features in the conveyance of November 1453. Although frequently styled ‘senior’ in borough records, a sobriquet also used in his will,21 Ibid. Y/C 4/145, mm. 2, 5; 146, mm. 5, 10d; 148, m. 15; 149, m. 20d; 150, m. 11; 153, mm. 7d, 16; 154, m. 17; 155, m. 16; 156, m. 8d; 160, m. 9; 169, m. 17; 174, m. 9d; Reg. Aleyn, f. 46. the MP is not always easy to distinguish from this namesake, evidently a relative and perhaps Robert Pynne’s younger brother. Active in the borough from the later 1430s, John Pynne junior served as a deputy to the water-bailiff of Great Yarmouth the following decade, but it is unclear whether it was he or the MP who received a royal pardon in 1446.22 Ibid. Y/C 4/146, mm. 5, 10d; 153, m. 16d; 154, mm. 14, 15; C67/39, m. 42. Nor is it certain which of the two Johns featured in a Chancery suit that John Geete of Ipswich brought at the end of the decade, to complain that John and Robert Pynne had seized his ship at Yarmouth.23 C1/17/131.