Family and Education

b. c.1607, o.s. of Edmund Pye, Scrivener, of Ludgate, London and Leckhampstead, Bucks. by Martha, da. of Thomas Allen, Haberdasher, of Ludgate. m. lic. 7 May 1635, aged 28, Catherine (d.1701), da. of Sir Thomas Lucas of Colchester, Essex, 3da. suc. fa. 1635; cr. Bt. 23 Apr. 1641; kntd. 27 April 1641.1

Offices Held

J.p. Bucks. July 1660-d.; freeman, Chipping Wycombe 1661; commr. for assessment, Bucks. and Westminster 1661-d., corporations. Bucks. 1662-3, loyal and indigent officers, Bucks., London and Westminster 1662.2

Biography

Pye was the grandson of a London butcher. His father acquired great wealth as a scrivener, and bought Leckhampstead in 1628. Pye himself purchased Bradenham, about 1642. He married into a strongly royalist family, and on the outbreak of civil war, ‘voluntarily forsook his dwelling in the Parliament’s quarters’ and joined the King at Oxford. In 1646 he submitted a particular showing lands worth £790 p.a., but the Buckinghamshire committee estimated his estates in that county alone at £1,050 p.a. The total debts owed to him exceeded £20,000, and he owed £8,000 to creditors. He was fined £3,065 on the Oxford articles for his delinquency, but did not complete payment until 1654. No royalist activity can be ascribed to him during the Interregnum.3

Pye was recommended as a deputy lieutenant in August 1660 but was not approved. He was returned for Wycombe, four miles from Bradenham, in 1661, and listed as a friend by Lord Wharton, to be managed by Edmund Petty. A moderately active Member of the Cavalier Parliament, he was named to 66 committees, most of secondary importance, but made no recorded speeches. Among his committees in the first two sessions were those to provide carriages for the army and navy, to consider the improvement of the customs, to provide remedies for meetings of dissenters, and to settle estates on the marriage of his niece to the Earl of Kent. His most important committee was for the conventicles bill in 1664. He defaulted on a call of the House in December 1666, but resumed his committee work soon afterwards; and may have moved into opposition. He was appointed to committees to suppress conventicles in 1670 and to prevent the growth of Popery in 1671. He was buried at Bradenham on 28 Apr. 1673. His daughters married John Lovelace and Charles West.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: Leonard Naylor / Geoffrey Jaggar

Notes

• 1. Vis. London. (Harl. Soc. xvii), 183; (cix), 53; G. E. Cokayne, Lord Mayors and Sheriffs of London, 53; London Mar. Lic. ed. Foster, 1103; PCC 49 Pye.
• 2. First Wycombe Ledger Bk. (Bucks. Rec. Soc. xi), 166; Huntington Lib. Stowe mss, 2/452.
• 3. PCC 60 Drake; VCH Bucks. iii. 36; iv. 183; SP 23/191/67, 69, 71; Cal. Comm. Comp. 68, 1443-5.
• 4. VCH Bucks. iii. 36; iv. 183; PCC 49 Pye.