REYNOLD, John

Reynold was one of the wealthier men to represent Leicester in Henry VI’s reign, for he was assessed on an income of as much as £20 p.a. in the Leicestershire tax returns of 1436.3 E179/192/59. His career presents several puzzles and these are harder to resolve because of the difficulty in disentangling his career from that of his son and namesake. Nonetheless, the broad outlines of his career are clear. Despite his country estates, he devoted most of his energies to the administrative affairs of Leicester. In the mid 1420s he served two successive terms as bailiff, and between 1434 and 1459 he held the mayoralty on no fewer than four occasions. His attestation of six of the borough’s parliamentary elections from 1426 to 1455 and his frequent appearance as a witness to deeds conveying property in the town are suggestive of near permanent residence there.4 C219/13/4; 14/1, 2; 15/1, 2, 4; 16/1, 3; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 421-2, 424-5; Wyggeston Hosp. Recs ed. Thompson, 357-8; CCR, 1447-54, p. 362.

From the mid 1430s Reynold is usually described in the borough records as ‘the elder’ or ‘senior’ to distinguish him from his son. The younger John was also active in Leicester’s affairs: in the early 1440s he was deputy to Richard Hotoft*, the royal bailiff, and he attested the parliamentary election of 1450.5 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 276; C219/16/1. The last certain reference to the older John dates from 3 May 1461 when, ‘of beneuolent and feithful hert for the goodly zele and effectuall pleasure that he had unto the honrable and worshipfull office of Mairalte of the towne of Leycestre, the which was be him iiii sondry yerez mynstred and occupied’, he granted a tenement in the High Street to the mayoralty for the finding of a chantry priest.6 Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 277-8. It is probably safe to assume that he died very shortly afterwards, and that it was his son who was mayor in 1463-4. In any event he was dead by 1466, when his son was defendant in an action concerning land at Bromkinsthorpe (on the outskirts of Leicester) which his father had previously held as a feoffee.7 Ibid. 448; CP40/819, rot. 65. It was probably the son, who, described as an ironmonger, was defendant in a plea of trespass in 1462, and certainly the son who was one of the Leicester coroners in 1465: KB27/806, rot. 3; KB9/313/28-29. By the late 1470s the latter had himself become ‘the elder’ to distinguish him from his own son, admitted to the town’s merchant guild in 1469-70: Wyggeston Hosp. Recs. 369; Leicester Bor. Recs. ii. 452, 463.

Yet while the outline of our MP’s career as a Leicester burgess is clear, it is more difficult to discuss his role as a county landholder. The location of his lands has to be inferred from actions sued in the central courts of common law. In the 1440s and 1450s he brought various actions for minor offences against his property at Nether Broughton and nearby Melton Mowbray, some miles to the north-east of Leicester, at Little Glen (where he had a fishery), and in the parish of Aylestone, a few miles to the south of Leicester. In 1453 he brought an action in respect of close-breaking at nearby Blaby. He may also have held lands further to the south at Walton-by-Kimcote, for his son is described as husbandman of that vill when a defendant in an action of 1448.8 CP40/722, rots. 180d, 263d; 732, rot. 57; 742, rot. 96d; 748, rot. 392; 768, rot. 392; KB27/747, rot. 62. The MP is not to be confused with the namesake who held land a few miles to the south of Melton Mowbray at Leesthorpe and Little Dalby. This was John Reynold of Langham, only a few miles from Leesthorpe, who was appointed as a tax collector in Rutland several times between 1401 and 1432: CP40/682, rot. 446; CFR, xii. 115; xiv. 152, 302; xvi. 108.

Reynold also had further property in the right of his wife, Agnes Spraty.9 Warws. Feet of Fines (Dugdale Soc. xviii), 2656. Her father, Richard Spraty, was a tax collector in Warws. in 1416, but no more is known of him: CFR, xiv. 171. A Chancery case of the early 1450s shows that she was the widow of the obscure Hugh Freman and the putative heiress to nearly 1,000 acres of land in and around Atherstone (just over the Leicestershire border in Warwickshire), from which she and Reynold claimed that she was being kept by her sole surviving feoffee. The couple had already been married for some time by this date. They were certainly married by Michaelmas term 1436, when they were sued by Thomas Ferrers, younger son of William, Lord Ferrers of Groby, for a minor offence against his property at nearby Tamworth;10 C1/22/62; CP40/703, rot. 241d. and her lands help to explain why Reynold was assessed at as much as £20 p.a. in the subsidy returns of that year. There is, however, indirect evidence that they had married long before. Interestingly, in 1417 a Robert Reynold of Atherstone had been appointed as a tax collector in Warwickshire.11 CFR, xiv. 222. This raises the possibility that our MP originated from Atherstone, and extended his property there by marriage to the heiress of another local family before moving to Leicester in the mid 1420s, presumably to further his mercantile interests.

Whatever his origins, John Reynold established a family which continued to play an important part in the affairs of Leicester long after his death. His son and heir twice held the office of mayor, and Richard Reynold, who was in all probability his younger son, was acting as town clerk by 1452. Indeed, Richard enjoyed a successful career as a local lawyer. Since the end of the 1440s he had been acting as an attorney for Leicestershire suits in the court of common pleas, and in 1457 he leased the property of Sir Thomas Erdington* at Braunstone near Leicester before buying it outright for 44 marks in 1466.12 CP40/753, att. rot. 3d; 780, rots. 337, 339d; Leics. RO, Winstanley of Braunstone mss, DG5/2. Somerville erroneously describes him as bailiff of Leicester, confusing that office with that of town clerk: R. Somerville, Duchy, i. 571; DL37/34/16.