BAYNING, Paul (1588-1629)

Bayning’s ancestors originated in Nayland, Suffolk close to the border with Essex. By the end of the fifteenth century they had migrated to Dedham, in the latter county, and were subsequently landowners of local significance. Bayning’s father and namesake became a merchant, first in Ipswich and later in London, where he was made free of the Grocers’ Company in 1574. Paul Bayning the elder initially traded with Spain but subsequently diversified into trade with the eastern Mediterranean. He also invested heavily in privateering and the newly-formed East India Company. The resulting profits enabled him to accumulate an extensive landed estate, principally in Essex, including the manor of Little Bentley, where he built a substantial house.13 Morant, i. 446; R.G. Lang, ‘Social Origins and Social Aspirations of Jacobean London Merchants’, EcHR, n.s. xxvii. 36, 38; Oxford DNB online sub Bayning, Paul (Jan. 2008); H.G. Gillespie, ‘Re-discovery of an Elizabethan Merchant Adventurer’, Gen. Mag. ix. 429-3.

In 1588 Bayning’s father was granted a coat of arms; five years later he became a London alderman. However, he resigned the latter position in 1602, according to John Chamberlain ‘for spite, that he would not have his [estranged] wife lady mayoress’.14 Grantees of Arms, 18; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 144. Bayning senior evidently had large social ambitions for his son. He seems to have made no effort to make Bayning free of the City of London, a necessary prerequisite for a mercantile career, but instead gave him a gentleman’s education at the inns of court. He probably also arranged his son’s marriage, to the daughter of Sir Henry Glemham^‡, a powerful Suffolk knight with court connections. The marriage brought Bayning into aristocratic circles, as his wife was the first cousin of Richard Sackville^*, 3rd earl of Dorset.15 HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 390-1.

It was presumably the elder Bayning who bought his son a baronetcy. However, the acquisition of this honour proved protracted, and the grant itself was never enrolled. On 27 June 1612 Bayning’s name appeared on a (deleted) list of those ‘not yet sworn’, and according to Dugdale, who cited the original but now lost patent, the honour was not conferred until 24 Sept. 1612.16 Lansd. 163, f. 392v; W. Dugdale, Baronage of Eng. ii. 459. Even so, Bayning continued to be referred to as an esquire in official documents as late as May 1613.17 LC4/33/15, 242. Not until the following month was the title first used (in a recognizance for a statute staple). The reason why Bayning’s creation proved to be so problematic was probably twofold. First, prospective baronets were required to show an armigerous descent for at least three generations, whereas Bayning’s family had only recently acquired a grant of arms.18 L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 85. Secondly, Bayning may have experienced difficulty in taking the oath to the effect that no gratuity had been given to any courtier in order to obtain the honour. However, Bayning eventually overcome these obstacles, apparently by means of a surcharge, as he paid £1,500 in one lump sum instead of the usual £1,095 payable in three instalments.19 Lansd. 163, f. 405. Payment was made on 4 Aug. 1614, when the additional £405 was described as a contribution to the benevolence levied by James I in the aftermath of the Addled Parliament’s failure to vote subsidies. By then Bayning had also been granted the lesser, but more assured, honour of a knighthood.20 E401/1892, unfol. (4 Aug. 1614).

Bayning inherited his father’s estate in 1616, making him one of the largest landowners in north-east Essex.21 B.W. Quintrell, ‘Govt. of the County of Essex’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1965), 92; R. Cust, Forced Loan, 262, 264. He was also one of the most important money-lenders of the period, lending to and borrowing from the merchant-turned-minster, Lionel Cranfield^*, subsequently 1st earl of Middlesex, and helping to finance the activities of Hugh Audley, the notoriously usurious Court of Wards official.22 Stone, 535; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 254, 421, 479; HMC Sackville, i. 350. His favoured form of transaction seems to have been the mortgage, and consequently he had a significant aristocratic clientele. In the 1620s he was the major creditor of Henry Percy^*, 3rd earl of Northumberland,23 Household Pprs. of Henry Percy, Ninth Earl of Northumberland ed. G. R. Batho (Cam. Soc. 3rd ser. xciii), p. liv. For other mortgages see CSP Dom. Addenda 1625-49, p. 582; Essex RO, D/DRg 2/45. while a ledger book dating from his son’s minority records mortgages to four earls and a baron, as well as loans to a further two earls and one baron. Although some of these loans were made by his executors, they probably represent the kind of business that Bayning himself conducted in his lifetime.24 WARD 9/359. Nevertheless, the significance of money-lending to Bayning’s finances should not be exaggerated. At his death Bayning had £136,751 out on loan, which sum produced a profit of £10,237 over the next three years. However, in the same period his lands yielded over £12,000.25 Essex RO, D/DRg 2/97.

Bayning largely avoided lending to the crown during the Jacobean period, although he promptly contributed £200 towards the Palatinate benevolence in January 1622.26 SP14/156/15. The only occasion he did so was in January 1617 when he, Sir William Heyricke^‡ and Sir Baptist Hicks^* (subsequently 1st Viscount Campden) lent £7,500, each man supplying £2,500. The money was to be repaid out of the alienation fines and profits of the hanaper, but only after other creditors had been satisfied. Heyricke and Hicks, who had better court connections than Bayning (they were brothers-in-law of Sir Humphrey May^‡, who became chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in 1618), found other ways of recouping their money, acknowledging receipt of their parts of the principal in June 1621. Bayning, however, was still unpaid, both principal and interest, when James I died in 1625.27 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 452; Essex RO, D/DRg 2/47; E214/632; R. Ashton, Crown and the Money Market, 60, 169.

Despite his father’s social ambitions, Bayning seems to have had little inclination to enter public life after inheriting his estate. Pricked as sheriff of Essex in 1617, he was summoned before the Privy Council the following year for failing to contribute to the county’s cavalry militia. In September 1625 he also refused to lend £1,000 to the joint lord lieutenant of Essex, Robert Rich^*, 2nd earl of Warwick, who needed the money for the militia. Bayning pleaded inability because of the economic disruption caused by the major plague epidemic of that year, although he lent Hugh Audley £2,000 at about this time.28 Maynard Ltcy. Bk. ed. B.W. Quintrell (Essex Hist. Docs. iii), 105; Prestwich, 479. Perhaps as a result, he was not made a justice of the peace until 1626.29 APC, 1617-18, p. 122.

Bayning’s wealth made him an obvious source of speculation when it came to the sale of peerages, and in July 1618 it was reported that he had been made a baron.30 HMC Downshire, vi. 455. However, unlike Cranfield, whose mercantile background proved no impediment to his ennoblement, Bayning may not initially have been considered suitable for elevation to the peerage. In late 1622 the wife of Ludovic Stuart^*, 2nd duke of Lennox [S] (earl and subsequently duke of Richmond in the English peerage), wanted Bayning, ‘or some such fellow’, to be pressured into lending £10,000 to tide her husband over until ‘some gentleman be made a baron or some baron an earl’. She showed no interest in discovering whether Bayning would be interested in purchasing a title himself.31 Kent Hist. and Lib. Cent. U269/1/OE608, duchess of Lennox to the earl of Middlesex [c.Nov. 1622].

During the 1624 Parliament Bayning was one of the ‘ablest Londoners’ nominated by the Commons, and appointed by statute, to serve as one of six treasurers of the subsidies voted by Parliament for the war with Spain.32 ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 174v. This brought him into closer contact with the court and, in November that year, he advanced £5,000 to Sir Adam Newton, receiver general of the duchy of Cornwall, for the upkeep of the household of Prince Charles (Stuart^*, prince of Wales).33 SC6/Chas.I/1630. In January 1625 Bayning lent £10,000 to the lord admiral, George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham, towards equipping the fleet, the money being paid directly to the victualler of the Navy.34 GEORGE VILLIERS; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 12.

In May 1625 Bayning followed Buckingham to Paris, where the latter had gone to fetch Henrietta Maria. Bayning’s journey puzzled the contemporary newsletter-writer John Chamberlain, who could not ‘conceive the reason … unless there be a purpose to lay him to a pawn’.35 Chamberlain Letters, ii. 619. It is possible that Bayning was involved in the transfer to England of Henrietta Maria’s dowry. In January 1626 Buckingham secured an order for repayment of the money he had borrowed from Bayning the previous year, but the parlous state of the crown’s finances ensured that there was little prospect that it would be promptly discharged.36 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 557.

Bayning may have been keen to gain Buckingham’s favour, as he was becoming increasingly impatient to secure repayment of the £2,500 he had advanced the crown in January 1617. Indeed, in around mid 1626 he petitioned Charles I to that effect. Recognizing the king’s ‘occasions for money at this time are very urgent’ he offered to ‘strain himself’ to lend enough additional money to create a total debt of £10,000, so long as he was given sufficient security for repayment of the whole.37 Essex RO, D/DRg 2/47. The petition seems to have prompted negotiations between Bayning and the lord treasurer, James Ley^*, 1st earl of Marlborough. On 28 Aug. 1626 Marlborough reported that Bayning was owed £5,000, which sum presumably included the interest on the 1617 loan, but was willing to advance a further £7,000 so long as he was granted the security of the petty customs for both sums. Bayning was also prepared to accept seven per cent interest for the new loan, one per cent below the legal maximum. However, the commissioners for the king’s revenue rejected these proposals, on the grounds that the petty customs were already overburdened.38 Univ. London, Goldsmiths’ ms 195/1, ff. 23v, 26v. Negotiations nonetheless continued, and in October Bayning agreed to lend £7,500 in return for an assignment on the revenues of the hanaper (for repayment of both that sum and the loan made in 1617), together with eight per cent interest.39 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 576; E403/2745, ff. 125v-6. It was presumably the payment of this money into the Exchequer which prompted a fresh report in September 1626 that Bayning would soon be made a peer.40 Life and Orig. Corresp. of Sir George Radcliffe ed. T.D. Whitaker, 135.

Appointed to the Essex bench in the summer of 1626, Bayning was named a Forced Loan commissioner for the county later that year. However, he was an inactive local administrator and presumably spent a large part of the autumn of 1626 in London negotiating his new loan to the crown. This may explain why he was absent from the initial meeting of the Forced Loan commissioners for north-east Essex on 1 November. He also failed to attend another meeting on 19 Feb. 1627. He himself paid £120 towards the Loan, but not until 9 April.41 SP16/39/3I; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 61; Maynard Ltcy. Bk. 358; Cust, 239 n.52; E401/1387, rot. 9. Towards the end of April Bayning lent a further £1,500 to the crown, presumably to help equip the fleet that was preparing to sail for France, and in December he was repaid £400 of this sum.42 E401/1387, rots. 24, 26; E403/2564, f. 69; 403/2746, f. 195.

On 27 Feb. 1628 Bayning was granted his long predicted barony; ten days later he became Viscount Bayning of Sudbury (though he thought of himself as Viscount Sudbury).43 PROB 11/156, f. 251v. There is no evidence that Bayning paid the Exchequer for his title. However, on 11 Mar. 1628, three days after the viscountcy was conferred, the Exchequer was authorized to pay Buckingham £5,000 to enable the duke to satisfy half the sum he had borrowed from Bayning in 1625. Perhaps threatened with the loss of all the money he was owed, Bayning may have been compelled to sign a fictitious receipt for the money as the price for his peerage, so enabling the duke to keep the £5,000 involved for himself.44 CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 12. Bayning, however, seems to have been unhappy with this arrangement, and would have preferred to remain a commoner. Certainly Joseph Mead reported that he ‘offered a round sum to have wanted his honours’.45 T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 328-9.

Bayning took his seat on the first day of the 1628 session and was formally introduced by William Fiennes^*, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele and Edward Cecil^*, Viscount Wimbledon three days later, on 20 March. Granted leave of absence for three days on 24 Apr., he was excused again on the 28th but returned to the chamber on the 30th. He was also excused on the afternoon of 25 June, but returned the following day, the last of the session. In total, he was present for 76 of the 94 sittings of the upper House but, aside from assisting in the introduction of Hicks, recently made Viscount Campden, on 8 May, he played no recorded part in proceedings.46 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 72-4, 339, 355, 394, 699.

In July 1628, possibly encouraged by the recent vote of five subsidies to the crown, Bayning advanced the king £20,000. In return an order was issued to repay him the remaining £1,100 of the money he had lent in late April 1627.47 E403/2747, ff. 52v-3, 161v. That same month it was rumoured that Bayning had bought, for £30,000, Buckingham’s Essex mansion, New Hall, and would soon be made an earl. However, no such sale ever took place, as the duke was assassinated the following month.48 Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. J.O. Halliwell, ii. 206. Following Buckingham’s death the £5,000 which remained outstanding from Bayning’s 1625 loan to the duke was included among the sums assigned to be repaid out of the profits of the admiralty.49 T. Rymer, Foedera, viii, pt. 2, p. 144. In December a crown debtor was ordered to pay £3,000 of this sum directly to Bayning. Early the following year he received a further £5,000, in part repayment of the £20,000 he had advanced the previous July, from the receipts of the 1628 subsidies.50 E403/2983, p. 14; 403/2747, ff. 161v, 180.

Bayning attended 21 of the 23 sittings of the 1629 session, but left no other trace on the parliamentary records. By the time of the 1629 Lent assizes (18 Mar.) he had been removed from the Essex bench, presumably for inactivity.51 ASSI 35/71/2. The following July he suffered what his widow subsequently called his ‘death sickness’, when he lay ‘so weak and ill’ that he depended on his servants to lift and carry him.52 SP46/76, f. 51. He died on the 29th of that month at his house in London. Buried in his father’s tomb in his parish church of St Olave Hart Street on 1 Oct., his funeral was ‘most honourably solemnized according to his degree’, attended by ‘great officers of state, and many noble peers’, and cost a staggering £2,252 11s. 10d. In the sermon, preached by one of the king’s chaplains, Robert Willan, it was said of Bayning that he ‘knew that frugality is the purse-bearer to bounty. He was also praised for ‘his care and circumspection’, which extended ‘to the smallest atom of affairs’, for thereby ‘a fair patrimony [was] increased by his industry’.53 Coll. of Arms, I.8, f. 24r-v; J. Stow, Survey of London ed. J. Strype, i. bk. 2, p. 39; R. Willan, Eliah’s Wish: a Prayer for Death (1630), 43-4; Essex RO, D/DRg 2/97.

In his sermon, Willan characterized Bayning’s religion as ‘neither superstitious [Catholic] nor factious [puritan]’. Bayning was certainly generous in his benefactions. In his lifetime he contributed towards the rebuilding of the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields and to the library of the recently established Sion College. He also gave his home parish in Essex, Little Bentley, a silver communion cup and flagon pot weighing 68oz. However, he reserved his greatest generosity for his will, dated 12 July 1629. In this he bequeathed £1,220 for the building of an almshouse in St Olave Hart Street, to be called ‘Viscount Sudbury’s Hospital’, and left £2,280 to buy land to fund the foundation. He also made several other benefactions to the London hospitals and prisons, and to the poor of various parishes in Essex and London.54 Willan, 39-40; J. Parton, Some Acct. of the Hosp. and Par. of St Giles in the Fields, 198; W.H. Milman, ‘Some Acct. of Sion Coll.’, Trans. London and Midx. Arch. Soc. vi. 106-7; Essex RO, Little Bentley Par. Reg. (Soc. Gen. microfiche); PROB 11/156, ff. 251v-2.

Bayning was succeeded by his only surviving son Paul Bayning^*, 2nd Viscount Bayning, whose wardship, costing £20,000, was reduced by £2,000 as part payment of the king’s debt to his father.55 Coventry Docquets, 471; SP16/153/17. A further £6,000 of the crown’s debt was subsequently paid off in the form of almost worthless land in Sedgemoor. Not until January 1632 was the Exchequer ordered to clear the remainder out of the first fruits, part of the crown’s ecclesiastical revenues.56 R. Hoyle, ‘Disafforestation and Drainage’, Estates of the Eng. Crown ed. R. Hoyle, 380; E403/3040, unfol.; SP16/236/15.