PAYN, Thomas

In April 1434 a Thomas Payn appeared as a juror in the court of William Bathe*, mayor of the borough of Melcombe Regis, neighbouring Weymouth, to indict the parson of Buckland Ripers for the abduction and rape of a local woman.1 KB9/996/34.

The earlier biography made the assumption that the MP of 1410 and 1414 was the same person as he who sat in the Parliament of 1437.2 The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 29-30. There are, however, two other possibilities. One is that the latter was a younger but also local man (the juror just mentioned); another is that the MP in 1437 was the Thomas Payn, subsequently accorded the status of ‘gentleman’ or ‘esquire’, who through marriage to a young heiress, Joan Romsey, had acquired lands elsewhere in Dorset, at Melcombe Horsey and in the hinterland of Wareham.3 Feudal Aids, ii. 113, 127. Joan had been born in 1418 as the only child of Sir Thomas Romsey of Rockbourne in Hampshire, whose landed income in that county, Somerset and Wiltshire amounted to over £77 p.a.4 Feudal Aids, vi. 451, 503, 541. Some of Sir Thomas’s estates were held in tail-mail so could not pass to his daughter, and in any case when Sir Thomas died in 1420 the infant Joan’s mother remained in possession of a sizeable jointure. Payn paid £45 at the Exchequer to secure the child’s marriage from the Crown on 12 May 1425, and two years later he also acquired a lease of Romsey properties in Salisbury and rents in Salford, Somerset.5 CIPM, xxi. 567-9, 689-90, 879; CFR, xv. 100, 169. Fortuitously for him, early in 1430 Joan became a greater heiress, following the deaths of her uncle Walter Romsey (d.1428) and small cousin of the same name, and at some point between February and April that year Payn made her his wife. She was still under age. He set about accumulating other parts of her inheritance held in wardship by the Crown, and was required in May 1430 to be present at the assignment of dower to her uncle’s widow.6 CIPM, xxiii. 203-6, 357-9; CFR, xv. 303, 322; CCR, 1429-35, p. 20. Payn took up residence at Rockbourne, and it was in Hampshire that in the spring of 1434 he was required to take the oath not to maintain those who broke the law.7 Feudal Aids, ii. 113; iv. 421; CPR, 1429-36, p. 397. After his wife made proof of age the couple received seisin of her inheritance in the following July.8 C139/67/53; CCR, 1429-35, pp. 284-5.

Even if it was this gentleman who sat for Weymouth in 1437 (rather than a more obscure local man), little more is recorded about him. Rockbourne and moieties of the Romsey manors of Ferneham and Combe Bisset were settled on him and his wife and their issue in 1440,9 CPR, 1436-41, p. 473; CCR, 1435-41, pp. 428-9. and three years later they were also assured of eventually inheriting the Hampshire manor of Nether Burgate and hundred of Fordingbridge, in which Joan’s kinsman Thomas Lekhull alias Rivers had an interest for life. In the event, however, the couple both died in 1447, without having produced surviving children:10 CCR, 1441-7, pp. 160-1; 1454-61, p. 93; Som. Feet of Fines (Som. Rec. Soc. xxii), 105, 197; Hants RO, Coventry of Burgate mss, IM53/357, 387-8. Joan shortly before May and Payn on the following 31 Dec.11 CFR, xviii. 45; C139/131/20. Possession of the valuable Romsey estates, to which Roger Wyke† and his son John Wyke II* of Bindon claimed title, was to be disputed for the next 20 years.12 Stonor Letters, i (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xxix), pp. xlviii-lvi.