MAYNARD, Christopher (c.1602-69), of Totnes, Devon.

Christopher Maynard was descended from the Maynards of Sherford, a parish in the South Hams district of Devon, near Kingsbridge and some 11 miles south of Totnes. The Maynards were minor gentry, but were making their mark through advancement in the professions. Maynard’s grandfather, Thomas Maynard, was a brother of Alexander Maynard of Tavistock, father of John Maynard*. This made Christopher Maynard a first cousin once removed of the serjeant-at-law and parliamentarian.10Vivian, Vis. Devon, 561. No-one of Maynard’s name can be traced in taxation records of Totnes until the arrival of his father.11Devon Taxes, 55. Christopher Maynard senior married twice, into families involved in the mercantile trade of his adopted home town. His first wife, Christopher junior’s mother, was one of the Lacye family, and Richard Lacye, a Totnes merchant, claimed Maynard senior as a ‘cousin’ in 1623.12PROB11/148/686. No parish register entry of Christopher’s baptism has been traced, but those of at least of four of his siblings between 1604 and 1611 are recorded in the Totnes register, and when eventually he came to write his will Maynard described himself as having been born and bred in the town. After the death of Maynard’s mother, his father married again, into the Brooking family, another clan of the Totnes mercantile elite. This marriage was a step up for the Maynards, and a sign of their arrival in Totnes society. In 1614, Maynard senior had been required to provide a musket and his own time for militia drill; William Brooking had been expected to provide a corselet, a musket and caliver, but defaulted on personal attendance.13Devon RO, typescript ‘Devon muster rolls of the 16th and 17th centuries’, ff. 41-44. Maynard senior and Agnes Brooking had a number of children together. When the older Christopher Maynard died, in 1635, seven children with his two wives were living. His wealth was substantial rather than spectacular. He left five of his children £20 each, noting that he had given his four sons each a sum of money long ago and had ‘procured them other means besides’.14PROB11/168/151. He bequeathed a modest and tactfully balanced legacy of 20 shillings each to the vicar of Totnes and to the puritan lecturer, John Garrett.

Nothing is known of Christopher Maynard’s education, but he was to play a major part in the corporate and commercial life of the town so was doubtless apprenticed to a Totnes merchant, quite possibly his own father. By 1629 he was a burgess of the town, but it seems much more likely that it was his father rather than he who was mayor in 1632. Had he been the mayor at this stage in his career, it would have been a most unusual leap-frog over the usual civic cursus honorum. Before his father died in 1635, both Maynards were made trustees of an almshouse in the town newly funded by donation.15Cornw. RO, RD 1562. He became receiver in 1637, warden of the Magdalen hospital in 1639, and churchwarden the following year. As ‘Christopher Maynard junior’ he was rated for Ship Money in 1635 at 8s, while his newly widowed step-mother had to pay 14s.16Devon RO, 1579A/8/11. In the 1638 Ship Money assessment his rate was increased to 10s, the same rate as his step-mother, but he was never listed among the defaulters.17Devon RO, 1579A/7/1/50-2. During the civil war period there is no evidence to suggest that Maynard took an active part in the conflict, or even that he had sympathies with either side. In 1644 he travelled freely on civic business between Totnes and Exeter, both places under royalist control.18Devon RO, 1579A/7/1/47. The puritan minister John Garrett, recipient of Maynard’s father’s measured bequest, abandoned Totnes for Somerset when the town was garrisoned for the king, and two burgesses were ordered by the corporation to return, but Maynard seems never to have drawn attention to himself.19Devon RO, 1579A/17/33, 34. He was not among those who gave £239 to the king’s cause in 1644, but his step-mother contributed £3.20Devon RO, 1579A/17/30.

Once the civil war had ended and after Totnes had been brought under parliamentarian control, Maynard’s career as a merchant quickly picked up. In 1647, in 12 ships mainly of Dartmouth but occasionally of French ports, he imported 19 cargoes of French cloth and a variety of grains, and was by this time one of the most prominent merchants on the River Dart.21E190/952/3. The following year, he became mayor for the first time, and evidently worked to heal divisions – ostensibly over the borough’s finances – which had arisen within the corporation between Thomas Prestwood, mayor in 1644, and the burgesses. Underlying this conflict had doubtless been political antagonisms which had festered during the occupation of the royalist garrison, and the relief which greeted its resolution is evident in the civic record.22Devon RO, 1579A/7/1/47. As was typical of leaders in towns, Maynard took on more leases of civic property as his career progressed. In 1646 he held a house and lands in the castle ditches, and by 1650 had extended his holding to include commercially valuable land near the quay.23Devon RO, 1579A/7/1/68, 83. He also bought lands outside the town, including Stantor House, Marldon, near Paignton, for £600, only to have to try to rid the property of the interest of the agencies of penal taxation, which had sequestered the tenant for recusancy.24Devon RO, 48/13/1/9/1; CCC 2929-30. Further purchases during the mid-1650s show how Maynard was by then moving in Devon gentry circles, beyond the commercial sphere of Totnes. He was guardian of Thomas Risdon of Parkham, a family well chronicled by the Heralds’ College, and shared an interest in a debtor’s estate with Sir William Courtenay† of Powderham.25CCC 2929, 2988; Vis. Devon 1620 (Harl. Soc. vi), 242.

Maynard’s politics are hard to read. He was, like his father, in favour of a preaching ministry in his borough, and was a friend of John Ford, who in 1655 was a minister in the fourth division of the Devon and Exeter Association (an alliance of puritan ministers across denominational lines).26Bodl. Walker c.4, f. 211; PROB11/330/133. Otherwise he seems to have been conformist and willing to adapt to whatever changes of national regime were imposed. In July 1654 he was one of the signatories on the indenture returning Major-general John Disbrowe for Totnes to the first protectorate Parliament.27C219/44, box 1. He himself was elected to serve in the 1656 Parliament. His family relationship to John Maynard probably carried little or no weight in this. The borough was reduced to one seat by the terms of the Instrument of Government, and in 1654 Disbrowe had elected to sit for Cambridgeshire, leaving Totnes unrepresented. In selecting Christopher Maynard, a native, a former mayor and an important merchant, the Totnes burgesses were making as safe a choice as they possibly could. His more famous cousin was persona non grata to the lord protector’s council at the opening of the 1656 Parliament. No such opprobrium attached to Christopher, but his activity in what turned out to be his only Parliament was very modest. He was named just to one committee (22 Dec.), on the entirely local topic of the bequest by Elizeus Hele, which in due course was to endow Totnes grammar school.28CJ vii. 472a; W. Cotton, Graphic and Hist. Sketch of the Antiquities of Totnes (1850), 57. No speeches of his were recorded by Thomas Burton*.

There is no evidence that Maynard ever again sought a parliamentary seat. He served a second term as mayor in 1658-9, and in that capacity acted as returning officer when his son-in-law, John Pley, and his ‘old acquaintance and good friend’, Gilbert Eveleigh, were returned to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, showing how influential in Totnes he had become.29C219/46; PROB11/330/133. The Restoration of the monarchy seems to have brought no disagreeable retribution upon Maynard. His flexibility during the 1640s now stood him in good stead. He served a third term as mayor in 1665-6, a feat remarkable enough in Totnes to merit mention on his gravestone.30Windeatt, ‘Totnes: its Mayors and Mayoralties’, 114. In the year of his third mayoralty he gave land in Dartington for the poor.31Devon RO, 57/15/2/11/4. Two years later he drew up his will, which bestowed a house in Totnes and its contents on the mayor and burgesses, the profits to go towards funding a preaching minister in the town. He left money for a silver chalice to be used in the Lord’s Supper at the parish church, and gave a collection of silverware to his widow. His two children, whose mother was Maynard’s first wife, were to enjoy annuities of at least £80 and £100 a year each, respectable sums but hardly spectacular ones for a merchant’s small family. His closeness to John Ford, who had conformed at the Restoration and had not been forced out in 1662, is evident in the augmentation of stipend left to him personally and not ex officio. It is clear from this that while he himself had conformed to the 1662 church settlement, Maynard wished to promote the notions of the preaching ministry which had informed his lifelong outlook.32PROB11/330/133. Maynard died on 29 March 1669 and was buried in Totnes church on 2 April. None of his descendants is known to have sat in later Parliaments.