Family and Education

b. by 1466, s. of Thomas Honywood of Hythe and Honywood in Postling by Thomasin Lovelace of Kingsdown. m. (1) Agnes, da. and coh. of Henry or John Martin of Graveney, 1s. 1da., 14 other ch.; (2) Alice, da. and coh. of William Barnes of Wye, wid. of Richard Woodward, 1s. 1 or 2da.3

Offices Held

Chamberlain, Hythe 1492-3, jurat from 1501, bailiff 1502, 1510; commr. subsidy 1514; bailiff to Yarmouth 1494.4

Biography

The Honywood family had long been settled at Postling, three miles from Hythe, and both John Honywood’s father and his uncle and namesake had sat for the port in Parliament. From this uncle Honywood inherited a shop in the marketplace of Hythe in 1470 and from his father, who died in 1474 or early in 1475, he received the reversion after his mother’s death to all Thomas Honywood’s shops in the same marketplace and to lands and houses at Honywood.5

Honywood was a receiver in Hythe of the tax granted in 1497 and was appointed a subsidy commissioner in 1514 even though the Cinque Ports had been specifically exempted from all charges by a proviso to the Subsidy Act (5 Hen. VIII, c.17) passed during Honywood’s second Parliament. He received 17s.10d. for his attendance at the Parliament of 1504. Frequently present at meetings of the Brotherhood of the Cinque Ports as one of the delegates from Hythe between 1488 and 1516, he made only two further appearances, in April 1524 and in July 1529. No will or inquisition post mortem has been found but Honywood was probably still alive in 1534 when his son and namesake was styled ‘junior’. The younger Honywood married the daughter of John Hales I and was the father of Christopher^† and Thomas Honywood^†.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

• 1. Hythe chamberlains’ accts. 1483-1519, f. 75.
• 2. Add. 34150, f. 135.
• 3. Assumed to be of age in 1487 when witness to a will, Arch. Cant. xlix. 148. Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. lxxiv), 65; (lxxv), 7, 104-5; Top. and Gen. ii. 268-9.
• 4. Hythe chamberlains’ accts. 1483-1509, ff. 35 seq.; Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. (Kent Arch. Soc. recs. br. xix), 116; LP Hen. VIII, i.
• 5. Arch. Cant. l. 98-100.
• 6. Hythe chamberlains’ accts. 1483-1509, ff. 56, 57v, 75; Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. 99 seq., 190, 209; LP Hen. VIII, vii; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 1, p. 151.