REYNOLD, John.

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

Constituency

Dates

1539

Family and Education

Offices Held

Biography

John Reynold remains unidentified. The name was a common one, and none of those who bore it was either so prominent nationally or so clearly linked with Bath as to be accepted without question. The best case can be made for a resident of Keynsham who made his will in March 1553 providing for a wife and two daughters and died before the following July when it was proved. Keynsham lies between Bristol and Bath, although nearer the first, and this John Reynolds was a man of means who left three gowns, two of them furred, to different beneficiaries. He may have been the John ‘Reignold’ who in May 1551 was tenant of a house and 100 acres of land at (the unlocated) ‘Kington Maundefeld’, Somerset, but the inquisition taken in Devon in April 1548 must be that of another John Reynold, who owned land in that county worth £18 a year. The Reynold who was a yeoman of the crown between 1539 and 1545 could have been either of these or yet another, and such a court connexion might explain the election of an outsider, whereas the possibility of episcopal influence would arise if the Member was the ‘Mr. Raynold’ who was host in 1540 to a household servant of John Clerke, bishop of Bath and Wells. There is nothing to be said in favour of John Reynolds alias John ap Rhydderch, who probably entered Gray’s Inn in 1530 and was clerk of the peace and of the crown in Anglesey and Merioneth between 1542 and 1546; his identification by a modern authority with the yeoman of the crown is probably wrong.2

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: D. F. Coros

Notes

  • 1. E159/319, brev. ret. Mich. r. [1-2].
  • 2. Wards 7/4/53; PCC 15 Taske; LP Hen. VIII, xiii, xviii, xx; CPR, 1550-3, p. 36; Som. Med. Wills (Som. Rec. Soc. xxi), 60; E. Stephens, The Clerks of the Counties, 1360-1960, p. 125.