KYNASTON, Thomas (1450/54-1515/20), of Myddle, Hordley and Shrewsbury, Salop.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. 1450/54, 1st s. of Sir Roger Kynaston of Myddle and Hordley by 1st w. Elizabeth, da. of Reginald, Lord Cobham of Sternborough Castle, Kent. m. Mary, da. of Sir Robert Corbet of Moreton Corbet, Salop, d.s.p.; 1s. illegit. suc. fa. 28 Oct. 1492. Kntd. 14 Oct. 1513.3

Offices Held

Sheriff, Salop 1507-8; commr. gaol delivery, Shrewsbury 1507, subsidy, Salop 1512, 1514, Shrewsbury 1514; alderman, Shrewsbury by 1511, bailiff 1511-12; assistant to commrs. in marches of Wales 1513.4

Biography

Thomas Kynaston’s father, a younger son in a family descended from the princes of Powys, was a leading Yorkist who augmented his fortunes by two wealthy marriages. His first wife, the widow of Richard, 7th Lord Strange of Knockin, brought the Kynastons a claim to the lordship of Myddle and other lands of the Strange inheritance; an inquisition taken 13 years after Sir Roger Kynaston’s death found them to have descended to Thomas Kynaston although then in the possession of Lord Strange’s heirs.5

Kynaston maintained his father’s tradition of turbulence, being outlawed with his half-brother ‘Wild Humphrey’ in 1491 for an affray at Stretton, and the belatedness of his entry into local administration may reflect his dubious reputation. He is also said to have been one of those to whom Edmund Dudley (his relative through his Corbet marriage) appealed for aid on Henry VIII’s accession, although whether the pardon which he sued out in 1510 was prompted by any such hazardous episode is not known. Kynaston had a cousin and namesake of Shotton in Myddle, who under the alternative styles of esquire and merchant also had a pardon in 1510 and was married to the widow of a Shrewsbury, vintner, but since the Member for Shrewsbury was a knight by 1514 he must have been Thomas Kynaston of Myddle, who was knighted on the French campaign of the previous year, and who when first elected in 1512 was bailiff of Shrewsbury. For this Parliament he and his fellow-Member Thomas Trentham each received £6 10s. in ‘fees’; they were said to have set out for the last session on 31 Jan. 1514, eight days after it had begun, and to have returned on 4 Mar., the day it ended. When the money was raised to pay them, Kynaston was living in the town’s castle ward and himself contributed 9d. to the collection. Shrewsbury complied with the King’s request for the re-election of the previous Members and recorded the result of the election of 12 Dec. 1514 on the dorse of the King’s letter.6

The absence of Kynaston’s name from the list of those contributing towards the payment of parliamentary wages in 1519-20 has been taken to mean that he was by then dead. The Elizabethan chronicle of Shrewsbury wrongly includes his death under the year 1512-13. He was buried in St. Mary’s church, Shrewsbury, and his heir was his half-brother Humphrey Kynaston.7

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Muriel Booth

Notes

  • 1. Shrewsbury Guildhall 985.
  • 2. H. Owen and J. B. Blakeway, Shrewsbury, i. 319.
  • 3. Date of birth estimated from death of mother and of her first husband, CP, xii(1), 356-7 and n; CPR, 1452-61, p. 169. Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxix), 294-5.
  • 4. CPR, 1494-1509, p. 531; Statutes, iii. 79, 114, 119; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 4), xii. 178; Shrewsbury Guildhall 66, f. unnumbered.
  • 5. Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 2), vi. 209-22; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 805; CPR, 1494-1509, pp. 452, 468, 503; D. G. Hey, An Eng. Rural Community: Myddle under the Tudors and Stuarts, 25-26.
  • 6. Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 2), xi. 16, 17; LP Hen. VIII, i; Shrewsbury Guildhall 985; Owen and Blakeway, i. 319, 549.
  • 7. Shrewsbury Guildhall 985, 986; Shrewsbury sch. Taylor ms 35, f. 12v.