PAYN, Thomas, of Weymouth, Dorset.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1386-1421, ed. J.S. Roskell, L. Clark, C. Rawcliffe., 1993
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Apr. 1414

Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

Payn is first noticed in the records, when, in September 1404, he exported a shipment of cloth worth £5 in The Peter of Weymouth, of which he himself was master. He is known to have owned a house in Weymouth next to property belonging to Thomas Cole I*. In June 1418 he and six other men from the same port entered into joint recognizances for £400, binding themselves to appear before the King’s Council to answer regarding the seizure of goods belonging to a Flemish merchant in breach of the truce with Burgundy, only for it to be agreed in October following that, full restitution having been made, no further action would be taken against them. Inquiries held in Dorset in 1421 about evasion of customs duties revealed that over the previous four years Payn and other Weymouth men had loaded 20,000 woolfells at Melcombe Regis for shipment overseas, the jury being ignorant whether or not they had paid the requisite sums. In 1435 The Christofre of Melcombe, with Thomas Payn as master, left Southampton with cargoes belonging to John Payn† of Southampton, a fact which suggests a relationship between the merchants of the two ports.1

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

It was almost certainly an older Thomas Payn (but perhaps a relative), who sat for Weymouth in the Parliament of 1385 and was bailiff for the town in 1391-2: CAD, i. C1134.

  • 1. E122/102/20; PCC 27 Marche; CCR, 1413-19, pp. 503, 514; CIMisc. vii. 608; Port Bk. 1435-6 (Soton Rec. Ser. vii), 5.