Family and Education

b. by 1508, 3rd s. of Robert Wymond (d.1510) of Rye by Joan. m. Dorothy, 2s. 1da.2

Offices Held

Chamberlain, Rye 1537-8, jurat 1538-9, 1541-3, 1544-8; bailiff to Yarmouth 1540.3

Biography

Robert Wymond came of a line of merchants but his own occupation has not been traced. In 1533 he and a fellow-townsman told Cromwell of a conversation in which the parish priest William Inold had upheld papal supremacy and of rumours following the King’s marriage to Anne Boleyn that excommunication would help the Emperor and the Danes to conquer England. Four years later he himself denied charges of heresy brought by Inold. Several of his friends and colleagues were similarly accused at the same time, among them William Mede, whose executor he became in 1543, and Alexander Welles, his fellow-Member.4

All that is known of Wymond’s attendance at the Parliament of 1545 is that he and Welles received between them £12 paid in three instalments for their expenses and that Wymond had a further 2s. after the King’s death. He was related, perhaps only by marriage, to John Eston who sat in the same Parliament for Wigan. It is possible that he was re-elected to the next Parliament and even that he attended its first session. He and Alexander Welles are named as the Members for Rye on a list compiled from the collections of a 17th-century lieutenant of Dover Castle, whereas the town paid Welles and George Reynolds for their attendance from the opening of the second session in November 1548. Unless the list in question made the mistake of repeating the names from the previous Parliament, the discrepancy is best resolved by assuming that Wymond was elected with Welles but then superseded by Reynolds. Although intervention by the warden of the Cinque Ports, Sir Thomas Cheyne, cannot be excluded, with Wymond’s election being overruled at the outset, he may have retired of his own accord, and in this case the more likely time would have been before the opening of the second session. His reelection as a jurat on 26 Aug. 1548 was quickly followed by his replacement on the score of ill-health, and even if he had been willing to discharge his parliamentary duty the town’s marked preference for Members who were jurats might have told against his retention.5

Wymond made his will on 27 May 1549. He asked to be buried at Goudhurst and gave his wife a life interest in all his property in Rye and elsewhere in Sussex, out of which she was to maintain their sons William and Robert until they reached 15. He left to his daughter Alice £20 on marriage to be raised from his goods and named his wife residuary legatee and sole executrix. The will was proved on 24 Sept. 1549.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

• 1. Rye chamberlains’ accts. 5, f. 122.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from father’s death and from his having two younger brothers, PCC 28 Bennett. Canterbury prob. reg. A. 26, ff. 266v-267.
• 3. Rye chamberlains’ accts. 4, 5 passim; Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. (Kent Arch. Soc. recs. br. xix), 224.
• 4. Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. passim; LP Hen. VIII, vi, xi; SP1/79, ff. 23v-24, 113, ff. 106v-109; Elton, Policy and Police, 20, 86-90; Lewes archdeaconry ct. wills bk. A. 1, f. 44.
• 5. Rye chamberlains’ accts. 5, ff. 122, 123, 144v, 145v, 167v; PCC 8 Powell; Add. 34150.
• 6. Rye chamberlains’ accts. 5, f. 167v; Canterbury prob. reg. A. 26, ff. 266v-267.