MYNN, Henry (by 1513-66), of Great Fransham, Norf.

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. by 1513, 2nd s. of Edward Mynn of Little Fransham by Maud. educ. G. Inn, adm. 1527. m. by 1560, Christiana, da. of William Bishop of Great Yarmouth, 1s. suc. bro. 11 Nov. 1546.2

Offices Held

Escheator, Norf. and Suff. 1549-50; common clerk, Norwich May 1553-May 1559.3

Biography

Henry Mynn of Fransham is to be distinguished from his namesake the scholar of Eton and King’s, Cambridge, who became surveyor of the lands of the bishop of Ely and parson of Balsham in Cambridgeshire. Although this Henry Mynn is said to have later practised as a lawyer in Norwich, it is clear that he was not the clerk of the city, but his uncle.4

Mynn’s legal practice is glimpsed in 1538 when he was attorney for Henry Radcliffe, Lord Fitzwalter, in an action brought by a London draper. He was already acting for Norwich when the city made him its clerk in 1553, and he was still in office when he was returned to the last Marian Parliament. He owed his nomination for Bramber to the 4th Duke of Norfolk, who owned the borough, his fellow-Member being his cousin Nicholas Mynn, one of the duke’s lawyers. He resigned his office at Norwich soon after Elizabeth’s accession, the assembly minuting that by reason of his appointment to an office in London he could not give ‘so diligent attendance in the office of town clerkship for the city as the office doth require’. Mynn’s new office has not been identified, but it did not prevent him from continuing to give legal counsel to the city or from acting for the duke, as he did in 1561 over the duchess’s inheritance from her father Baron Audley.5

Mynn died on 25 Jan. 1566, leaving his six year-old son Nicholas to succeed to the family property which he himself had inherited 20 years before from his elder brother Nicholas, a former auditor of the mint and clerk of the Exchequer.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: R. J.W. Swales

Notes

  • 1. C193/32/2. His surname is misprinted as Wynne in OR.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from education. PCC 23 Pynnyng, 20 Alen; Vis. Norf. (Harl. Soc. xxxii), 59; HMC Var. vii. 318-20; C142/85/18.
  • 3. Norwich ass. procs. 2, f. 241V; 3, f. 52.
  • 4. Eton Coll. Reg. ed. Sterry, 242; PCC 13 Hogen, 35 Porch, 15 Spert, 23 Pynnyng, 20 Alen.
  • 5. LP Hen. VIII, xiii; Norwich ass. procs. 3, f. 52; Arundel Castle ms G1/7.
  • 6. E150/659/7; LP Hen. VIII, xxi; CPR, 1569-72, p. 329; Cal. I.T. Recs. i. 463.