ARMYNE, Evers (1599-1680), of Osgodby, Lenton, Lincs. and Gray’s Inn, London; later of Kettlethorpe Hall, Ketton, Rutland

Armyne, a younger son of the prominent puritan Armyne family of Osgodby, followed his eldest brother to Cambridge, before going on to pursue a legal career at Gray’s Inn. With his brother’s support he was returned for Grantham in 1626. He took no known part in the second Caroline Parliament and never sat again. His marriage brought him a small estate in Rutland, valued at between £150 and £200 a year, where he subsequently resided and was appointed to the local magistrates’ bench and other offices.15T. Blore, Rutland, 173, 175-6. On 9 May 1640 the vicar of Ketton reported to Archbishop Laud that he was to be tried for refusing the sacrament to Armyne and his wife for four years, because they declined to come up into the chancel.16CSP Dom. 1640, p. 139.

During the Civil War Armyne lived in London until March 1644 when, as a deputy lieutenant of Rutland, he raised two troops of horse for Parliament and assumed responsibility for the sequestration of the extensive royalist estates in the county.17VCH Rutland, i. 189, 192, 196-7. His records were destroyed during the brief royalist incursion of August 1645; and five years later the newly appointed central committee for compounding not only complained of a substantial shortfall in rents from sequestrated property, but also threatened Armyne with distraint unless proper accounts were submitted.18CCC, 193, 559. In 1650 he bought the prebendal manor of Ketton from the trustees for the sale of dean and chapter lands, doubtless on behalf of the tenant, a nephew of Francis Bullingham*, whose son later married Armyne’s daughter.19VCH Rutland, ii. 259-60. Armyne held local office throughout the Interregnum, but his continued commitment to Presbyterianism excluded him from politics after the Restoration. On the death of his nephew, the 3rd baronet, in 1668, he inherited the Lincolnshire manors of Pickworth and Silk Willoughby, and under the Declaration of Indulgence his houses at Ketton and Osgodby were licensed for Presbyterian worship.20PROB 11/328, ff. 397v-402; Lincs. N and Q, xvii. 107; CSP Dom. 1672-3, pp. 94, 261. He made his will on 18 Oct. 1677, bequeathing his estate to his grandson Armine Bullingham, who sold Kettlethorpe Hall in 1697. Armyne’s date of death is unknown; he continued to attend meetings at Gray’s Inn until at least July 1679, and his will was proved on 5 July 1680.21PROB 11/363, f. 240. None of his direct descendants entered Parliament.