Sir Stephen Jenyns - a historical account by Dr Chris O'Brien

Sir Stephen Jenyns and his family

This account has been produced by Dr Chris O'Brien to mark the 500th anniversary of Jenyns’ death on 6th May 1523, and draws on a wider range of sources than were available to Gerald Mander when he wrote The History of the Wolverhampton Grammar School

Front Cover: Merchant's Mark of Sir Stephen Jenyns. Design by Emma Bowater, based on an example of his seal.

Graphic design by Matt Overton.

Illustrations

Signature of John Nechells, from a document of 1525. Staffordshire RO

Land transfer to William and Ellen Jenyns, 1445. Cheshire RO

John Jenyns claims his mother’s lands in Wolverhampton, 1495. Cheshire RO

Some imports of Stephen Jenyns, August 1495. National Archives.

The Arms of Goldwell, from the window at WGS

Extract from Wool Customs & Subsidy Particulars of Account, 1512/13.

National Archives

Signature of Stephen Jennyns from TNA C146/5525, 1507. National Archives

London Tax List for the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury, c. 1522. National Archives

The opening of the deed conveying property in Lime Street to John Nechells, 1509. WGS

Heading to the Court Roll of Perywood for 12th October 1507.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Seals from a deed dated 6th December 1506. Corpus Christi College, Oxford

Pages from Gospels presented to St Mary Aldermanbury, 1508. British Library

The remains of Elsing’s Spital as they stand today

St Andrew Undershaft, St Mary Axe

Windows from St Andrew’s Undershaft, now in Big School at WGS

Account of the Funeral of Margaret Jenyns. British Library

Tomb of Sir Stephen Jenyns, drawn By Sir Thomas Wriothesley. British Library

Grant of Arms to John Nechells, 1526. Cheshire RO

The Memorial to Thomas and Joan Offley, in the chancel of St Andrew Undershaft

Stained glass window representing Stephen Jenyns in Big School, WGS

Tables

Cloth exported by Stephen Jenyns, 1477 – 1513

Occupations of tradespeople taken to court for debt by Jenyns

Wool exports of Stephen Jenyns compared with total exports, 1495 – 1522

Total Wool Exports through London, selected years, 1495 – 1522

Wool exports by Staffordshire families, 1495 – 1542

Early Masters of Wolverhampton Grammar School

Family Trees

Ancestry of Stephen Jenyns Descendants of Stephen Jenyns Part of the family of William Offley

Introduction

This account, produced to mark the 500th Anniversary of Stephen Jenyns’ death (6th May 1523), is designed to expand on the details of his career given in Mander’s The History of the Wolverhampton Grammar School. Mander made extensive use of material in the possession of the Merchant Taylors’ Company and of records at the (then) Public Record Office. Much more is now available.

One important source is the Crewe Collection at Chester Record Office. When a descendant of Thomas Offley married the heiress of the Crewes, he changed his name. Thus many of the Wolverhampton documents in the collection relate directly to the Jenyns family. The publication by the Hanseatic Historical Association of the surviving London Customs Accounts has allowed Jenyns’ trading activities to be explored in considerable detail. Online access to records of the Court of Common Pleas also shed light on his world.

Finally, Stephen Jenyns’ probate accounts, discussed in a recent thesis and now available online, supply astonishing detail about the administration of his estate.¹

Acknowledgements

Gerald Mander’s account is the essential starting point for any study of Jenyns and avoids errors concerning his marriages which are present in Clode’s history of the Merchant Taylors and have been repeated elsewhere. I am grateful to Dr Stephen Freeth, the Merchant Taylors’ Archivist for his guidance regarding their archives at the Guildhall Library, to Ellie Wilson for introducing me to the Probate Accounts and to Dr Richard Asquith for allowing me to see his PhD thesis which discusses them in considerable detail. I am grateful to St Helen’s Bishopsgate for allowing access to photograph the Offley monument in St Andrew Undershaft.

I am grateful to Dr Simon Harris and the King’s Benchers group of the Keele Latin and Palaeography Summer School for much help with the reading and understanding of Latin documents, also to Duncan McAllister at WGS for assistance with aspects of the Latin encountered. Nevertheless, all remaining errors of translation are mine.

I thank the following for permission to use images of documents:

No 1, Sutherland papers, reproduced courtesy of Staffordshire Record Office. Copyright reserved.

Nos 2, 3 and 18 from the Crewe Collection, Cheshire Record Office. Reproduced with the permission of Cheshire Archives and Local Studies and the owner/depositor to whom copyright is reserved.

Nos 4, 6, 7 and 8, from The National Archives. Crown Copyright. All rights reserved.

Nos 10 and 11 from the Archives of Corpus Christi College Oxford. Reproduced by permission of the President and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, to whom copyright is reserved. I thank also the archivist, Dr Julian Reid, for his guidance in accessing the documents during two visits.

Nos 12, 16 and 17 from the British Library, Copyright, British Library Board. All rights reserved.

Finally, I should like to thank many colleagues at WGS, especially Tina Erskine, John Johnson and Zoe Rowley for their encouragement in pursuing this project over several years.

Chris O’Brien, WGS, May 2023

Surnames

The School refers to Stephen Jenyns, and this is the spelling most commonly encountered, though Jennyns, Genyns and Gennyns also occur. John Nechells is another matter. In a series of documents relating to purchases and sales of lands in Kent, his name is given in 18 different forms. Treating ‘i’ and ‘y’ as interchangeable, ‘i’ occurs in the great majority of cases for the first vowel and ‘e’ on a little over half the examples for the second. So Nichells is preferable but School usage has been followed. In two surviving signatures, he himself writes Nychelles.

1 Signature from SRO D/593/A/1/30/14.

© Reproduced courtesy of Staffordshire Record Office, 2023. The ‘p’ is short for ‘Per’ and the final loop is an abbreviation for ‘es’: Per me John Nychelles

Margaret Jenyns’ first husband, William Buk or Buck appears with both spellings (and Bukke), but in his lifetime Buk seems to be more common, so that has been used.

Dates have been given in modern form with the year beginning on 1st January, rather than 25th March as it did in Jenyns’ time, so a document dated in the original ‘3rd February 1508’ would be given as 1509.

Money

Money has been given in the original form, pounds, shilling and pence. A mark was two thirds of a pound, i.e. 13s 4d.

The Bank of England inflation calculator suggests that prices in 1500 should be multiplied by about 900 to give a modern valuation. The multiplier does fluctuate quite considerably during Jenyns’ lifetime and is an average. Some quantities require smaller or larger multipliers. The WGS Master’s salary was fixed at £10 per year in 1512, for example!²

²www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator (March 10th 2023)

1 Ancestry

The earliest pedigree records Stephen’s parents as William Jennings of Tenby, Pembrokeshire and Ellen (or Helen) Lane of Wolverhampton. His date of birth is not known, but Mander’s suggestion that he was born in about 1448 is consistent with his apprenticeship in the year 1462 or 1463.1

Stephen’s parents were certainly married by 1445. On 9th November that year, in the manor court, Thomas Crouther, chaplain, and Henry Grassley surrendered half of a piece of land in Wolverhampton called Catebruche to the use of William Jenyns and Helen his wife and their heirs. Crouther and Grassley held the land by the gift of Nicholas Lone, and it is said to lie between the property of William Lone on one side and of William Leveson on the other.2

1314. In that year, Robert, son of John in le Lone of Wolverhampton quitclaimed to William, his brother, a messuage in Wolverhampton. Thomas en la Lone and Edith his wife are mentioned in 1345 and 1352. In the latter year, William in la Lene, chaplain, son of Petronilla also occurs. But these names have no obvious link to the main Lane family, as recorded in 1910.4

Stephen’s father’s name is all that is known of his Jenyns ancestry. In about 1495, John Jenyns, by his attorney, Richard Sutton, appeared in the Dean’s Court at Wolverhampton to claim, as the son and next heir of Ellen, who was the wife of William Jenyns, all the lands and tenements which she held of the Dean in Wolverhampton. He is described as ‘Johannes Jenyns de Denbyghe’ which raises a question as to whether Tenby in the pedigree is accurate.5

¹Grazebrook, H. Sydney, Visitations of Staffordshire, pp 224-225; Mander, Gerald P., The History of Wolverhampton School, 1913, p 1; GL, Records of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, Wardens’ Accounts, 1453 – 69, MS 34048/2, Apprentices for 1462/63

²CRO, Crewe Collection, DCR 26/3b/9

³SRO, Sutherland Papers, D 593/J/22/7/30(b). This is a 17th century summary of information from a Court Roll which does not survive. 4Mander, History, pp 1 and 365; CRO, Crewe Collection, DCR 35/8/3; DCR 19/11/2&3; DCR 26/3D/13; the Lane pedigree is given in Wrottesley, G, History of the Lane Family, in Collections for a History of Staffordshire, Third Series (1910), in particular pp 141 – 163. 5CRO, Crewe Collection, DCR 19/8C/4

3 CRO DCR 19/8c/4 – John Jenyns claims his mother’s lands in Wolverhampton © Cheshire Archives & Local Studies, 2023, Used by permission. The date is probably 1495 (‘decimo’ in line 2); John Jenyns de Denbyghe is just legible in the third line.

Stephen Jenyns’ probate accounts make several mentions of Nicholas Jenyns, described as the son of Sir Stephen’s brother, and always ‘of Tymby’, i.e. Tenby. The brother is never named, so may not be the John Jenyns mentioned above. The family link to Tenby is, however, clear; perhaps the clerk in the Wolverhampton court misheard the name as the more familiar Denbigh.6

Mander’s argument that the Lane who married William Jenyns was not a descendant of the Wolverhampton Lanes is based on the quarterings given for the Offley family in the Staffordshire visitation of 1663-64. The Lane coat there given corresponds to a Lone family of Kent and Essex. Jenyns does seem to have had a connection to Kent, but this may have come through marriage. The simple explanation that William Lane was connected with the main Lane family of Wolverhampton, however distantly, gains some support form the Crewe documents. The arms given for Joan Offley in the London visitation of 1568 include quarterings for Nechells and Jenyns only.7

In 1418, Robert Bryd of Eccleshall and Richard Calowes acknowledged themselves bound in the sum of £40 to William Lone of Wolverhampton, the obligation being void if the wedding took place before the feast of St John the Baptist between William and Margaret, daughter of Robert Bryd. This seems likely to relate to a planned marriage of Ellen Lane’s father, though there is no direct evidence that it took place. The early pedigree gives Ellen two sisters, Isabel and Agnes and suggests that both died without children, leaving Ellen her father’s sole heiress.8

There is some evidence to contradict this. A document dated 29th June 1461 records that John Dauson and Ellen his wife appointed an attorney to give seisin to William Wrottesley, knight, Hugh Wrottesley, Richard Leveson, John Salford and others in a third of the lands which once belonged to William Lone in Wolverhampton. Ellen is appointing trustees for her Wolverhampton lands following a second marriage (a marriage confirmed by the appearance of William and Robert Dauson, described as half-brothers of Jenyns, in the probate accounts). It implies that, by this date, William Jenyns had died and also that Ellen’s two sisters (or their heirs) were still living.9

6Lambeth Palace Library, MS 1102, Probate Accounts (e.g. f. 8r); The College of Arms has also confirmed that the original of the pedigree has Tenby.

7Howard and Armytage (Ed.) The Visitation of London in the year 1568, p 64. The Jenyns’ arms are stated incorrectly, being given 4 rather than 3 ‘tassels’.

8CRO DCR 35/9/19 for the bond; Grazebrook, Visitations.

9CRO DCR 35/9/22; LPL MS 1102, Probate Accounts, ff. 6v., 20r.

Ancestry of Stephen Jenyns

Figure 1: Ancestry of Stephen Jenyns. Unconfirmed links shown with broken lines.

Attempts to identify John Dauson have been unsuccessful. It is possible that he was a Londoner and had an influence on Stephen’s apprenticeship. Roger Dawson appears as a London tailor at about this date and might be related, but nothing definite has been found. A third marriage is also possible: in 1491, Richard Reynolds and Ellen his wife, formerly the wife of Richard Dauson, citizen and barber of London, took an action for debt against four Wolverhampton yeoman and one of Birmingham, alleging debts of £8. Not convincing in itself, especially given the difference in the Dauson forenames, but there is also a record that in 1479, Richard Reynolds, citizen and brewer, made a gift of all his goods to Stephen Jenyns, tailor. The latter is a legal device, but the connection makes the idea of a marriage more plausible.10

The Staffordshire pedigree indicates that Isabel Lane’s husband was named Swerder and that Agnes Lane married a man named Michell, both dying without surviving heirs. This detail is not included in the (earlier) London pedigree. Swerder is an unusual name; John Swerder, a London goldsmith, in his will dated 2nd April 1500, mentions his present wife, Isabel, who was living in September 1501, when she quitclaimed her dower rights in her late husband’s lands to his son Robert Swerder. John Swerder’s sons were probably from his first marriage, so Isabel is likely to have died without heirs.11

10TNA CP40/917, Trinity Term 1491, accessed via AALT CP917 F0086 and AALT CP917 D1633; Ledward, Close Rolls, 1476 – 1485, No 573. 11TNA, PROB 11/12/138, Will of John Swerder; Surrey History Centre, Loseley Manuscripts, LM 1659/19 (Details via Discovery website; original not consulted).

As to Agnes Lane, who married a Michell, no definite conclusions can be reached. It is interesting, though, that Thomas Michell, citizen and ironmonger of London, has a connection to Jenyns which long predates his marriage to one of the Offley sisters. In 1509, when William Stalworth and William Barnes (who were holding the property as trustees) conveyed premises in Lime Street to John and Katherine Nechells, Stephen Jenyns and others, to the use of John and Katherine Nechells and their heirs, the first feoffee listed after Stephen Jenyns is Thomas Michell, Ironmonger. It is probable that he also witnessed Stephen Jenyns’ will, though the register copy says ‘Thomas Nychell, ironmonger’. The very large number of names in a pardon roll of Henry VIII’s first year includes ‘Thomas Mychell, irnemonger, of London, late of Wolverhampton, Staffs’. Thomas Michell’s will makes John Nechill, described as his brother-in-law, one of his executors. Finally, the records of the Court of Husting contain a reference to a provision in Thomas Michell’s will (a provision which does not appear in the registered copy) stating that he left a tenement called The Ship in St Mildred, Poultry and £140 for the maintenance of a chantry chapel in the Church of St Olave, Old Jewry for himself, and for William and Agnes Michell, his father and mother, amongst others.12

The fact that Thomas’s mother was Agnes and that he had links to Wolverhampton, together with his early link to Stephen Jenyns give some support to the view that he might have been another Lane descendant. He was a successful man. A portrait of him in the Court Room at Ironmongers’ Hall was described in 1851 as ‘in a black gown and small ruff, with chestnut coloured hair and heavy countenance’ and said to have been painted in 1640, probably from an earlier picture.13

It is not clear whether Stephen Jenyns had any full siblings besides John. Nothing definite is known. Simon Jenyns who is mentioned in Stephen’s will, Robert Jennyns, a London grocer with Wolverhampton connections and William Jenyns, father and son, both resident in Dudley Street in 1532, may all have some link. But if they are connected, it is not possible to say whether they descend from John or from another brother of unknown name.

12Document in the possession of WGS; TNA, PROB 11/21/141, Will of Stephen Jenyns; Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, Vol 1, No. 438 (Part III), p. 252; TNA, PROB 11/22/308, Will of Thomas Michell; Sharpe, R.R., Court of Husting, London (1890), Wills for 19 Henry VIII. 13Nicholl, John, Some Account of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, London, 1851, p 473 (consulted via Internet Archive)

2 Apprenticeship, Early Career and Marriage

The Wardens’ Accounts of the Merchant Taylors’ Company record that Stephen Jenyns (Janyn) was apprenticed to Thomas Pye when William Person was Master (1462/63), by which time Stephen’s father had died and his mother had remarried. Thomas Pye was a freeman of the Company of Tailors and Linen-Armourers of the City of London, which became the Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1503. He paid the standard 3s 4d to register his apprentice. Thomas was fined 4d in the following year for an unspecified offence. The records of apprentices in the Accounts are damaged and partly illegible, but he took at least two further apprentices, Roger Holbek in 1472/73 and Thomas Bowyer in 1474/75.1

There is a little evidence as to Thomas Pye’s history. He appears in the Hustings in 1446 with Thomas Gresham, both of them recorded as churchwardens of St Michael Le Querne. He is recorded as one of the wardens of the Tailors’ Company about the time that John Prynce was Master (1456), and makes a few appearances in the Close Rolls. Stephen had been apprenticed to a man who was significant in the Tailors’ Company, having served as Warden, but who never served as Master. Thomas Pye does not feature in the records of overseas trade in which his apprentice later made his mark.2

After the brief entry recording his apprenticeship, Stephen Jenyns disappears from the written record until 20th November 1477, when he exported cloth through the port of London. During approximately half of the intervening time, he would have remained an apprentice. Whether he then continued to work for Thomas Pye or for some other master more actively engaged in the export trade is not known. The recently published London Customs Accounts give a good picture of his activities once he began to trade overseas himself.3

The accounts are based on a year commencing at Michaelmas (29th September). Names of the merchants exporting or importing goods can be found only when the Particulars of Account or Controlment Roll have survived. In the Petty Customs, charged on exports of cloth, Stephen Jenyns does not appear in 1473/74, but is present in the next two surviving records, for 1477/78 and 1480/81. He is missing from two short accounts covering periods in 1483 and 1485, but probably exported cloth at other times in those years. He then appears in all the surviving accounts up to that for 1512/13. Fewer of the Tunnage and Poundage accounts, which cover imports, survive. He appears in the four complete sets of accounts which survive between 1487 and 1520 (there are no earlier complete years within his likely trading life). These records can give only an indication of his import activities over a period of more than 30 years.4

Stephen Jenyns first appears as a Merchant of the Staple in the Wool Customs and Subsidy accounts for 1495/96, having been absent from those for 1493/94. This aspect of his career is discussed later.

¹GL, Merchant Taylors, Wardens’ Accounts: MS 34048/2 (1453 – 69) and 34048/3 (1469 – 84, damaged) ²Chew, Helena M (Ed.) Calendar of assize rolls: Roll FF, in London Possessory Assizes, pp. 116-129, No 261 for the case involving the churchwardens; Clode, C, Memorials, p. 49, for the reference to John Prynce late master and (among others) Thomas Pye late warden.

3Jenks, Stuart, London Customs Accounts, published online by the Hanseatic History Association, 2016 – 2019. All are part of Vol 74. Referred to here as LCA, with volume and part number as appropriate.

4For the Petty Customs, LCA Part 3 No 3 (1473/4), No 4 (1477/78), No 5 (1480/81), No 6 (1485 – part only); Part 4 Nos 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10 (1490/91, 1502/03, 1506 (part), 1506/07, 1507/08 and 1512/13 respectively); For the Tunnage and Poundage, LCA Part 3 No 6 (1485, part, no appearance); Part 4 No 1 (1487/88), No 3 (1494/95), No 11 (1513/14) and No 13 (1519/20)

Cloth Exports

Cloth was described according to the extent to which the expensive dye kermes (also known as granum) had been used in its manufacture. The great majority of the cloth exported by Stephen Jenyns was made without kermes (described as ‘sine grano’) and taxed at the lowest rate. Higher rates were charged for cloth which was ‘cum dimidio grano’ (dyed partly with kermes) and for cloth dyed completely with kermes (‘cum grano’ or ‘de scarleta’). The dye kermes was composed of the dried bodies of the insect coccus ilicis, gathered in large quantities from a species of evergreen oak in South Europe and North Africa. On at least one occasion, Stephen Jenyns imported this dye.5

A typical entry for a shipment of cloth reads:

‘1 bala cum 17 pannis 8 virgis sine grano’, meaning ‘One bale with 17 cloths, 8 yards of cloth without granum’

‘Bale’ is one of a number of terms used to refer to packing units which have no set size; A standard ‘cloth’ was 24 yards long, so 8 yards is one third of a cloth. The rate of petty customs was 14d per cloth for ‘sine grano’, 21d per cloth for ‘dimidio grano’ and 28d per cloth for ‘cum grano’. In some records, the charge is stated alongside each merchant’s goods, but in other cases only the total quantity is given. In these cases the charge has been estimated using these rates.6

Type of cloth/ Number of cloths (1d.p.)

Table 1: Cloth Exported by Stephen Jenyns (*) - one of these shipments was shared with Matthew Boughton

5Jenks, Stuart, LCA, Vol 74 part ii, No 9, Introduction, p xlviii, note 106 for the descriptions of the cloth; OED under ‘kermes’ for the details of the dye. The beetles from which cochineal was made were coccus cacti. 6The quoted entry is from Jenks, Stuart, LCA, Vol 74 part iii, No 5, page 131. Customs rates from part ii, No 9, Introduction p. xx. Entries summarised from part iii, Nos 4 & 5; part iv, Nos 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 10. The quantity of ‘dimidio grano’ in 1478/9 has been amended to match the tax charged; entries for Stephen Jamys and Jannys have been assumed to refer to Stephen Jenyns.

Imports: The accounts for Tunnage and Poundage

The nature of the items imported by Stephen Jenyns changed considerably over time. At his first appearance, in the accounts for 1487/88, he imported:

Wine 29.5 tuns (if a tun is taken as 252 gallons, that is 7434 gallons)

Oil 16.5 tuns

Wax 1200lb

Figs & Dates Less well-defined quanities

Almonds More than 550lb

Salt A 'vaga' (about 300lb)

Scarlet Grain (the red dye, kermes, referred to above) 2 hogheads and a bag

The total value of these imports (apart from the wine) was £146 11s 8d, on which poundage of £7 6s 7d was due. The tunnage due on the wine (at 3s the tun) was £4 8s 6d

Seven years later, he imported:

Wine 38 tuns (9576 gallons)

Oil 9 tuns

Wax 5850lb

Woad 85 bales

Iron Approximately 9 tonnes

Osmund (a superior grade of iron from the Baltic) 3 lasts

Flax & Rosin Less well-defined quantities

Bowstaves 1000

De Stephano Jenyns indigena, de navi Tyll Blank [pro] v balis lini iij lastis osmond ml bowstaves j straw cere continente xC lb ........................................................................................................................lxvj Li

From Stephen Jenyns, denizen, from the ship of Tyll Blank [for] 5 bales of flax, 3 lasts of Osmund, 1000 bowstaves, 1 ‘straw’ of wax containing 1000 lb (price).....................................................................£66

The poundage due on this load would have been £3 6s. For the year, the total value of the goods (except the wine) was £292 6s 8d, giving rise to £14 12s 4d in poundage; the tunnage was £5 14s.

Three points may be made here. First, the food items have disappeared. Secondly, he seems to have extended his trading activities to the Baltic. Finally, the total value of his imports (apart from wine) has very nearly doubled, so his trading ventures appear to have prospered.

In the next full account, for 1513/14, he was much less active. His imports were limited to wine (16 tuns), wax (900 lb), woad (31 bales) and 141 ells of ‘verder caddez’ – ‘a rich tapestry ornamented with representations of trees and other vegetation’ (verdure), the ‘caddez’ indicating that it was decorated with caddis, a worsted yarn. The imports, apart from the wine, are valued at £57 10s, attracting poundage of £2 17s 6d, with £2 8s due for the wine. At his final appearance, in 1519/20, his only import ws a small quantity of packing canvas.7

4: TNA E122/79/5 m. 21 Imports of Stephen Jenyns, August 1495. © Crown Copyright, 2023

7Jenks, Stuart, LCA, Vol 74, part iv, Nos 1, 3, 11 and 13 for the Tunnage and Poundage accounts; the definition of verder caddez is given in No 11, page 587. The entry shown above is in No 3, page 212

It seems reasonable to suppose that the value of his imports rose steadily between 1487 and 1495. But it is hard to be sure at what stage it began to decline. It was in about 1495 that he became a Merchant of the Staple; the export of wool then began to dominate his trading activities.

The records of the Court of Common Pleas shed further light on his trading. Details here are taken from modern indexes to a selection of records. Stephen Jenyns is absent from those for 1486 but pursues debts in the next, for the Hilary Term (January) of 1489. He appears similarly in the indexes for terms of 1492 and 1498, but not in those for 1490 or 1495 (though in the latter he is engaged in two actions regarding property). His actions for debt in the three available terms of 1489, 1492 and 1498 are summarised in Table 2.

Links between the trades represented in this summary and the items imported are clear. He imported dyes and prosecuted clothmen and a dyer for debt; he imported wine and prosecuted innholders and vintners; he imported bowstaves and prosecuted bowyers. Many of these early cases seem to be connected with payments due for goods supplied, though that has not been found explicitly stated in the court records. Native places recorded for the defendants range from Kent to Chester and from Bristol to Bishop’s Lynn (now King’s Lynn). Many of the clothmen lived in Kent.

The debt claimed from a tailor in 1489 was just £2, putting this claim in the same category as others from tradesmen. But two debts claimed from the son of a Bristol tailor in 1498 totalled £114. These, together with the £40 claimed from a fishmonger in the same year may fall into a different category of debt which dominates cases from 1500 onwards.8

Trade of defendant

Number of actions

Marriages

Stephen Jenyns was married three times. A grant of 1518, in which he gave property for the benefit of the bedeswomen of Elsing’s Spital, asks prayers for:

‘my soule and also the soules of Dame Margarete my wife Margarete & Johane late my wyves Willm Jenyns & Helen his wif my fader and moder Willm Buk late husband to my said wif Dame Margarete & their childres soules’.9

Table 2: Occupations of those against whom Stephen Jenyns took actions for debt

There is no doubt as to the identity of his third wife, Margaret. His first and second wives were another Margaret and Joan, probably in that order. But there is limited evidence as to their identity, none of it conclusive. The suggestions made here are speculative. His two daughters, Katherine and Elizabeth, married between 1498 and 1506 and are likely to have been born in the late 1470s or early 1480s, when he was beginning his trading activities. His first marriage must have taken place in this period.

The Materdale connection

The wills of John Materdale, Master of the Tailors in 1480, and of his wife Katherine both mention the Jenyns family and suggest a close relationship. John Materdale, who made his will on 22nd September 1497 and died between 5th and 15th November 1498, bequeathed to Katherine Jenyns 10 marks in money and a gilt cup. He also gave to Elizabeth Jenyns a cup of silver and gilt ‘the felow of that cup which I gave Anne Jenyns’. His wife was made executrix and one of the supervisors was Stephen Jenyns, who was given £10.

Katherine Materdale’s will was made on 25th May 1506 (proved 12th July). She gave to Stephen Jenyns, Alderman of London, her six best cushions with lily pots and wreaths and a plain salt of silver and gilt, with a cover, weighing 30 ounces. To Elizabeth Stalworth she gave her best carpet, a standing cup with a cover, silver & gilt chased with oaken leaves and a columbyne in the bottom, weighing 35 ounces, and a brass pot ‘that she desyred’.

She gave to Katherine Nechells 2 great brass pots, a washing basin of latten, her great cauldron bound with iron having 2 rings and the great trivet thereto, her coverlet with basil pots lined with blue buckram, a pair of fustian blankets, 2 pairs of her best sheets, her best towel and best table cloth of diaper, her long settle in the chamber with the carpet thereon, a brazen mortar with a pestle thereto, a great spit, a great dripping pan, the great carved chest in her chamber by the window and a ‘potte hings’. She gave to John and Katherine Nechells 6 bowls chased of silver and gilt with a cover with her husband’s mark in the bottom of them, weighing 125 ounces. She made John Nechells and William Barnes (or Barons) her executors, giving them 40s each for their trouble. The witnesses included Stephen Jenyns, citizen & Alderman of the city of London and William Stalworth (the husband of Elizabeth). No relationship with the Jenyns family is stated in either of these wills. John Materdale mentions his son Thomas as ‘Sir Thomas’, which suggests that he was a priest, and his own sister Elizabeth (no surname given). He also mentions a cousin, Joan Huchon. Katherine Materdale also mentions Joan Huchon, referring to her as her servant and confirming her husband’s bequest which has clearly not yet been passed on, as well as bequeathing other items. A number of other individuals are given items but their relationship is not stated. Elizabeth Pellisworth of Epworth is referred to as Katherine’s sister and a number of other people of the same surname receive items; a Pyllesworth or Pilsworth family occurs at Epworth (Lincs) at this time and later, but no Materdale

link has been found.10

The second will mentions Stephen Jenyns, his two daughters and their husbands either as legatees or witnesses. No mention is made of Stephen’s present wife. The relationship is clearly close (the comment about the pot that Elizabeth Stalworth ‘desired’ being particularly interesting) and the bequests are significant. It seems possible that one of Stephen Jenyns’ wives, probably the mother of his children, was the daughter of John and Katherine Materdale, or one of them. Either could have been married before, but when requesting prayers for their souls in their wills, neither mentions another spouse. Katherine specifically requests prayers for herself, her husband and her parents without referring to any other marriage. It is not surprising that the term ‘granddaughter’ is not used in the wills; Stephen Jenyns calls Margaret Stalworth, who was undoubtedly his granddaughter, his ‘cousin’ in his will.

The only known daughter of Katherine Jenyns, who married John Nechells, was Joan (Offley). If Katherine’s mother was Joan, and the daughter of Katherine Materdale, a neat pattern of naming daughters after their grandmothers is created. On the other hand, one of Elizabeth Stalworth’s daughters was named Margaret.

There is an interesting, early link between Materdale and Jenyns. In December 1483, Peter Pemberton, gentleman, of Eltham, Kent, released and quitclaimed to Stephen Jenyns and John Matyrdale, tailors, Henry Lee, fuller and William Lettres, scrivener, citizens of London, and two others, their heirs and assigns, all his rights in a messuage called Le Keye opposite Romeland in St Albans and in 40 acres of land, 32 of pasture and 10 of woodland in the towns and parishes of Tytenhanger, Burstowe and Park in the county of Hertford, which Stephen Jenyns had bought from him and which he and other feoffees now held.11

That Jenyns was connected in this way with John Materdale at about the time his daughters must have been born supports the idea that his wife could be a Materdale daughter. Unfortunately, no further evidence as to the eventual disposal of this land has come to light; it is possible that the transaction had something to do with the Company rather than an individual.

John Materdale’s will also mentions an Anne Jenyns, to whom he says he had given a cup. This may suggests that there was a third daughter, but it is also possible (since the source is the register copy of the will rather than the original) that the clerk made an error and Katherine Jenyns is intended.

10TNA: PROB 11/11/509 Will of John Matirdale; PROB 11/15/188 Will of Kateryn Materdale. The term 'lily pottes' refers to decoration showing a lily growing in a flower pot, symbolic of the Annunciation (OED); basil pottes must have a similar meaning. The term 'potte hings' is unclear. 11Ledward, Close Rolls, 1476 – 1485, No 1328

The Goldwell connection

Mander points out in The Wulfrunian that part of the heraldic glass from St Andrew’s Undershaft now in Big School at Wolverhampton represents the arms of Goldwell. A survey of the glass in St Andrew’s made in the 1920s shows that one window on the south side then had Stephen Jenyns’ merchant’s mark, the arms of Jenyns impaled with Kyrton, the arms of Goldwell impaled with Watton and the arms of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. Elsewhere, in the north aisle, the arms of Goldwell (alone) appeared with those of Nechells. Mander suggests that this could imply that one of Stephen Jenyns’ wives was descended from the Goldwell family. The impaled arms should suggest a Goldwell married to a Watton.12

Goldwell and Watton were both significant families in Kent, the Goldwells being based around Great Chart and the Wattons around Addington. The most prominent of them was James Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich (1472 to 1499) and Secretary of State to Edward IV.

A link between Jenyns and the Goldwell family can also be made through some of his property transactions. Between 1502 and 1509 Jenyns built up an estate in and around Selling (near Faversham) in Kent. Most of the property purchased had at one time belonged to Reynold Dryland. Reynold’s wife Christian, born Christian Haute, was the sister of Alice, the wife of William Goldwell of Great Chart. In addition, Jenyns bought from John Haddes of Rochester, a Dryland heir through his mother, eight London properties near St Paul’s. When he gave these to Elsing’s Spital in 1518, he asked prayers not only for his own family but for eight named members of the Haddes family. It has not, however, been possible to identify any specific Goldwell descendant who could have been the wife of Stephen Jenyns.13

No firm conclusions can be drawn. The tentative suggestion made here is that Stephen Jenyns’ children were born to a wife who was the daughter of John and Katherine Materdale and that his other wife was a member of the Goldwell family. It may be significant that his granddaughter, Joan, made no claim to the arms of Goldwell. But there is insufficient evidence to give any real confidence in these conclusions. It is possible that the surviving children were born to different wives. It is certain, however, that Jenyns had a wife who died after 1496 and that his third wife was not the mother of his children.14

12Note on the Old Glass from St Andrew Undershaft (unsigned, but almost certainly GP Mander) The Wulfrunian, Vol XXXV, No 2, pp 89 - 90. Historical Monuments, Vol 4 ‘Plate 15: Painted Glass, 15th-17th Century’ and ‘Aldgate Ward’, p. 15 and pp 4-13. Consulted via British History Online; Eden, F. Sydney, Heraldic Glass in the City of London, in The Connoisseur,Vol 93, pp 249 - 255 The Connoisseur via Internet Archive which has a good illustration of the Goldwell and Nechells arms together 13These land sales are discussed later. For the relationship between Christian Dryland and Alice Goldwell, see TNA C1/9/1 and C1/39/106, in both of which they are stated to be the daughters and heirs of John Haute of Pluckley. The Haddes family are mentioned in TNA LR 15/5..

14Rose Swan, in her will (TNA PROB 11/11/346) made on 1st December 1496, gave £4 and a black gown to the wife of Stephen Jenyns, tailor. This was not Margaret Buk, whose first husband was still living.

5 The arms of Goldwell Window originally in St Andrew Undershaft and now at Wolverhampton Grammar School.

3 Merchant Taylor

It is not known when Stephen Jenyns became a freeman of his company and a citizen of London; nor can it be established when he was granted the livery of his craft. At the time of the earliest surviving minutes of the Tailors and Linen Armourers, in 1486, he was already a member of the Court of Assistants, the senior members. It was usual to serve as warden before becoming master, so he was probably a warden before 1486. In the minutes for Monday 17th April 1486, though not listed as present, he is one of six appointed to ‘commune with the Drapers’ concerning the ‘sheeting in of Blackwell Hall’.

The minutes of 405 meetings between 1486 and 1493 survive (though most of 1487 is missing) and names of those attending are given for 82 of the meetings. Jenyns attended 36 of these, the first being on 7th August 1486. In many other cases, either nothing is said of the attendance, or the phrase ‘in the presence of the master and wardens’ is used. He would have been present at almost all the meetings held in his year as master. He attended just under half the meetings in the year before he was master (9 out of 20) and more than half between 1491 and the end of the records in 1493.

Jenyns was elected Master on St John the Baptist’s day (24th June) 1489, to serve for the ensuing year, in succession to William Buk, whose wife he was later to marry.¹

The minutes show that he was appointed to deal with a number of specific matters for the Company. In 1490 and again in 1492, he was one of two men appointed to arbitrate in a dispute between fellow tailors. This was a common practice; there is no record of the nature of the disputes or of the results. On 22nd November 1490, Jenyns and William Galle (Master, 1471) were assigned to supervise the repairs and rebuilding of the Saracen’s Head, a property of the Company in Friday St, adjoining St Matthew’s Church.²

On 17th July 1492, he was one of four masters (including William Buk) assigned to ‘prosecute the bill against foreigns’, meaning that they were to urge the City government to do more to introduce tighter controls on those who had not been apprenticed in London (whether from overseas or elsewhere in the kingdom). He and Buk were retained in this commission in the following April, to ‘pursue the bill and petition’ put to the Mayor and Aldermen ‘for the reformation of all foreigns that they hereafter work with no freeman and citizen of this city’.³

In July 1493 Jenyns was one of three former masters, along with the present and immediate past master and others, required to be ready on Wednesday 10th at 6 am to meet at St Peter Westcheap to view all the lands owned by the tailors. At the same time, it was agreed that he should be one of those who were to go to the house of William Hert (master, 1491/92) to hear his accounts for his mastership.4

When Jenyns himself accounted for his term of office in 1490, he inspired a major change in practice. He declined the allowances previously given to masters (namely 13s 4d for gathering in of the apprentice money, £4 for wine, 26s 8d for a dinner, 6d for garlands at the feast and £6 10s for the clothing of the master, wardens, clerk and beadle), returning £12 which he had been allowed, and the court agreed that these sums should not be allowed to masters in future.5

1Much of the detail in this section is taken from Davies, Matthew The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London: Court Minutes 1486 – 1493, Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 2000, including his biography of Stephen Jenyns, pp 293-4; summary of attendance at meetings is p 51, pp 12 – 14 (Table 1); p 135 for election.

2Davies, Minutes, p 170, p 194, p 173

3Davies, Minutes, p 200, p 243. Spelling in quotations has been modernised for clarity in this section.

4Davies, Minutes, p 255

5Davies, Minutes, pp 166 - 167

Disputes

This public profile did not come without controversy. On 8th April 1489, Richard West, Stephen Jenyns and Thomas Randall (all past or future masters) each promised under oath, on behalf of himself and his household, ‘to behave and conduct themselves rightly and honourably towards Ralph Bukberd and his household, in words as well as in deeds’. Richard West was Thomas Randall’s father-in-law. Randall’s career followed a very similar pattern to Jenyns’; both first occur exporting cloth in 1477/78 and importing wine and other items in 1487/88. Both exported wool as merchants of the staple in 1495/96, but in the case of Randall that was his only appearance in the wool accounts, and he disappears from other customs records by 1509. Ralph Bukberd was also involved in the overseas trade, importing alongside Jenyns and Randall in 1487/88 and 1494/95 and exporting one load of cloth in 1502, but not dealing in wool. In 1506/07 he became one of the Customers, responsible for collecting the customs in the port of London. The dispute may, therefore, have a connection to overseas trade. On 29th March 1490, Master Galle and Master Pemberton with two others were appointed to arbitrate between West, Randall, William Green and Ralph Bukberd – which sounds like a continuation of the same dispute, except that Jenyns no longer appears and is, in fact, appointed to supervise the arbitration. The dispute was settled on 7th April, when it is described as being between Randall and Bukberd.

In March 1493, William Barton, who had been summoned to the Hall in a dispute about an apprentice, complained that ‘he had never had right justice in this place’ and that ‘Master Jenyns served him like a false Judas when he was Master of this fellowship’. This was described as ‘ a great infamy and slander to this worshipful place and company’. No detail of his complaint about Jenyns is known.

In August 1492, a dispute between Master Hede and William Bunt was put to the arbitration of Willliam Grene and Nicholas Nynes, with Master Jenyns as ‘umpire’. If the arbitrators could not agree, Jenyns was to decide. When Hede came to the court he said ‘Stephen Jenyns should not be his judge, nor the Master neither, for Stephen Jenyns had caused him to lose £38’. Master Povey then said that he must be his judge – but Heed objected to him as well. The case was then referred to the Mayor, who committed Heed to prison for five days ‘in which time he sobered and mollified his impetuous agony and ire’. Then he submitted himself to the court, and to the arbitration. The alleged £38 loss remains unexplained.6

A dispute about Jenyns’ actions at a later stage of his career brought him into the courts. He had been appointed executor, with Nicholas Nynes, tailor (Master, 1496) and John Peynter, grocer, of the will of Rose Swan, widow of John Swan (Master, 1470/71). She made her will in 1496 and the executors proved it in March 1497. One of her bequests was to an orphan, John Story, who was then living with her. She gave him £40 and a considerable quantity of household items, including a gilt standing cup, a dozen silver spoons and a bed with hangings. As John was only 9 years old, she committed him and his inheritance to the care of Nicholas Nynes until he came of age. John Story, Merchant Taylor, was one of the witnesses to Jenyns bequest to Elsing Spital in 1518, but In or after that year, in the Court of Requests, he claimed that Jenyns, the only surviving executor, had retained money due to him. He also suggests that the executors shared large sums of money from Rose Swan’s estate and has a tale about ‘a bote with golde the wiche whas hid in the grounde’. He based his claim, in part, on the fact that Jenyns has paid him £3 10s, which he said was part of his legacy. Jenyns said that the money and goods were committed to Nynes and his wife in accordance with the terms of the will; he had employed John Story as his servant and agreed that he paid him £3 10s in salary. In response, Story said that if Jenyns had paid the legacy to Nynes, he should have made Nynes give a bond for payment to Story. He also said that he had been given other sums of money. The records of the decisions of the court at this period do not survive. It seems that the dispute was still going on when Jenyns died; an entry in the Probate Accounts for 2nd December 1523 shows that John Nechells gave Story as ‘a recompense for certain bequests of Mistress Swan’ six and a half yards of black cloth and four and a half of black lining to make gowns for Story and his wife and 20s 8d in money. On Easter Eve in 1524, Story was given a further 10s ‘for his comfort to pray for Master Jenyns’ soul’. Clearly Nechells wanted to settle the matter and leave no bad-feeling.7

6For the disputes, Davies, Minutes, pp 131, 156 – 7, 202, 207 – 209, 239; for a general discussion of disputes, 25 - 28 7TNA REQ 2/4/91 with Story’s replication to Jenyns’ answer in REQ 2/13/7. The Court records for 8 – 11 Henry VIII in REQ 1/4 have been checked (online, AALT) without success. The bill of complaint addresses Wolsey as cardinal and lord legate, which suggests a date in or after 1518 for the beginning of the case. The limited will is TNA LR 15/5. Probate Accounts: LPL, MS 1102, f.3 and f. 8v

Ceremonies

The minutes also illustrate the ceremonial aspects of the public life of the Company. It was the custom for the Mayor, after his election, to process on the Thames to Westminster, escorted by senior members of the crafts, in order to be presented to the King. Jenyns probably took part in this procession on many occasions. In his year as master, the minutes record on November 13th ‘paid for a barge to attend upon the mayor, 13s 4d; paid for drink for the boatmen, 16d’. Less than a month later, a barge was again required ‘for the encounter with the Prince’, referring to the ceremonial associated with the creation of Prince Arthur as Prince of Wales. In November 1492, the Mayor had written to the master and wardens, requiring them to find 30 horseman in gowns of violet to meet the King when he returned from France following the conclusion of the Treaty of Etaples. Stephen Jenyns was one of four former masters to join Walter Povey and 25 other tailors on this occasion. The masters were allowed 13s 4d for their costs (the other members had to make do with 10s). The King was met at Blackheath on 22nd December by the mayor and aldermen and ‘a competent number of Commoners clothed In violet’ who escorted him to St Paul’s Cathedral and on to Westminster.8

The minutes end in 1493, but Jenyns, as a former master and senior member of the Company must have been involved in similar disputes and events for the rest of his life.

Apprentices and Servants

Stephen Jenyns certainly took apprentices, but his career spans a period when the surviving records are sparse. The Wardens’ Accounts, in which his own apprenticeship is recorded, continue until 1484, but are badly damaged after about 1470. Apprenticeships are recorded in the published minutes between 1486 and 1491 (which do not cover most of 1487), but between then and Jenyns’ death there are no records. Wills and other sources do give clues, but may be misinterpreted.

John Nechells and William Stalworth were probably Jenyns’ apprentices. Stalworth refers to Jenyns as ‘my Master’ in his will. Both certainly worked with or for him. Stalworth could have become free of the Company through patrimony, his father being a freeman, but he may have been apprenticed to Jenyns. Nechells was exporting wool as a staple merchant by 1502, so a date of apprenticeship after 1491 seems unlikely. The most likely possibility is that both were apprenticed before the published Minutes begin in 1486.

One apprentice is recorded in the minutes, Thomas Leek of Granby, Nottinghamshire, the son of another Thomas Leek, gentleman. He was apprenticed for eight years from 1486, but does not feature again.

John Reymes is mentioned as Jenyns’ ‘servant’ in 1506, in relation to an incident which sheds interesting light on the way in which the law operated at this time. There are two cases in the Common Pleas, in which it is alleged that Nicholas Halleswell, physician, John Churchgate, yeoman and John Jones, yeoman attacked Reymes at a house belonging to Jenyns in the parish of St Martin’s, Ludgate, using swords, sticks and knives, and beat, wounded and mistreated him ’so that his life was despaired of’ (these are standard words in the writ and need not be taken too seriously). In one case, Reymes claims damages for his injuries. In the other, Jenyns claims for loss of the services of his servant for a month. As the case proceeds, Churchgate makes a counterclaim that Reymes attacked him and the ultimate outcome is not known.9

Reymes appears in the assessment of 1522 as a merchant taylor living in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury (100 marks). In December 1523, the Accounts note that £24 13s 4d of a debt he owed to Jenyns had been cancelled, because of his good and long service to Jenyns. He also assisted in the distribution of the estate. At his death, in 1547 or 1548, he held a lease of the parsonage of St Mary Aldermanbury, bought from the Court of Augmentations and owned other property there. His son was named Stephen; his wife was from Cranbrook in Kent and lived at Sissinghurst when she died.

William Barnes is identified as a former apprentice and servant of Jenyns in the probate accounts. He was living in Jenyns’ house in Thames Street when John Benett made his will in 1527. He appears with Reymes in a transaction concerning the Selling lands in 1517 and as a merchant taylor from 1516. Early in 1528, John Nechells gave him £33 from the estate towards ‘the great losses and charges that he has had’.

8Davies, Minutes, Introduction pp 41-43, pp 145, 146 (and n. 250), 221 9TNA, CP40/977, Trinity 1506, AALT Image D1901, AALT Image D1997 and next image, AALT Image_D2094 and CP40/978, Michaelmas 1506, AALT Image F0244 and AALT Image F0248.

John Bond (or Bound) and William Smith are described as Jenyns’ servants in the will. Both appear in the 1517 transaction. William Smith later married Jenyns’ granddaughter Margaret Stalworth and was both a merchant taylor and merchant of the staple.

As stated above, John Story is mentioned to have been paid as Jenyns’ servant and was working for him in 1518, but they then seem to have fallen out.

Two apprentices are mentioned in Jenyns’ will: his wife’s nephew, Stephen Kyrton, who married the widow of John Nechells, and John Wethers. In 1528, Nechells paid the Chamberlain of London for Wethers’ freedom. Both were Merchant Taylors and Merchants of the Staple and both died in 1553. Kyrton was Master in 1542 and Alderman for Cheap Ward from 1549 until his death.

These may not all have been apprentices and there will certainly have been others. Nechells, Stalworth, Barnes and Reymes were active in Jenyns work for many years, beyond any apprenticeship term, and must have been trusted associates. Reymes was entrusted with the use of Jenyns’ seal on one document associated with Kent.10

10TNA E179/251/15B, f. 57v for the London taxation list. Wills of John and Joan Reames TNA PROB 11/32/152 and PROB 11/44/18; Probate accounts LPL MS 1102, ff. 4v, 8r; CCC Twine vol 26 pp 115 – 116; Wills of Jenyns and Benett given in Mander, History, Appendix 4, pp 353 – 363 Probate Accounts LPL MS 1102, f.22 for Barnes, ff 5v, 6 for identification of Margaret Stalworth’s husband; f.26v for Wethers.

4 Merchant of the Staple

Stephen Jenyns did not export wool through London in 1493/94. He appears as a Merchant of the Staple in the next available Wool Customs and Subsidy Accounts, for 1495/96, and then in every surviving account up to 1520/21 except for 1505/06, which is incomplete, listing only eight shipments.

Exports were made in two forms, wool and wool-fells (sheepskins). Stephen Jenyns traded mainly in wool, but also exported wool-fells in three of the years for which there is evidence.

The heading reads ‘The first shipment towards Calais’ and below ‘In the ship of Robert Burman called Thomas of Southwold going towards Calais with wool and woolfells 11th March in the 4th year of the reign of King Henry VIII’

Wool was measured in sacks. A sack was 364 lb and was divided into 52 cloves of 7 lb. Many of the words are heavily abbreviated and ‘2 sacks’ appears as SS rather than using numerals A typical entry, from the account above, reads:

‘De Stephano Jenyn, milite, mercatore stapule, [pro] 2 saccis 22 [clavis]; 2 saccis 23 [clavis]. Summa 4½ sacci 19 clavi in 2 serpleris’

‘From Stephen Jenyns, knight, merchant of the staple, [for] 2 sacks 22 cloves; 2 sacks 23 cloves. Total 4½ sacks 19 cloves in 2 sarplers’

This means that the wool was packed in two bales or sarplers, one containing 2 sacks and 22 cloves (882 lb) and the other 2 sacks and 23 cloves (889 lb). The sarpler was not a measure of weight, but the sack was. Although the units of weight were sacks and cloves, making the total in the above example 4 sacks and 45 cloves, the use of half sacks in the accounts, as in the example, was standard.

6 TNA E122/204/2 f. 1 Wool Customs & Subsidy Particulars of Account, 1512/13 © Crown Copyright, 2023. Used by permission.

The accounts record that no customs duty had been paid, because it was collected centrally by the Company of the Merchants of the Staple. The tax due on wool had two parts, 6s 8d for customs and 33s 4d for the wool subsidy, making 40s (£2) in total for each sack. 240 wool-fells were equivalent to a sack of wool in this calculation.

Fleets of ships sailed to Calais with the wool, usually two or three times a year. Merchants did not load all their wool on one vessel. They spread the risk across several ships. Eight ships sailed on 11th March 1513, and Stephen Jenyns had wool on four of them. Wool on the Thomas was also owned by Richard Cradock (of a Stafford family and connected by marriage with the Offleys), James Leveson (of the Wolverhampton family; his brother, Nicholas, also had wool in several of the ships in this sailing), John Nechells (son-in-law of Stephen Jenyns) and William FitzWillam, master of the Tailors in 1499. Apart from Fitzwilliam, all these names can be seen in the extract above.1

Stephen Jenyns’ exports of wool in the years for which figures are available are given in Table 3, where they are compared with the totals for the year. The figures relate entirely to wool and wool-fells exported from London to Calais. Stephen Jenyns did not export from London to any other place in any year for which records survive. Records available for other ports have not been studied in any detail. The quantity of wool is given to the nearest sack; the customs and subsidy due has been calculated using the accurate figures but is rounded to the nearest pound. Since some folios of the records are damaged and merchants’ names cannot always be read, these figures represent a minimum; some shipments may have been omitted. The first sailing to Calais in the year 1522/23 was on 15th April 1523, three weeks before Stephen Jenyns died, so his absence from the next set of accounts is unsurprising.

1Jenks, Stuart, LCA; the example is taken from Vol 74, part iv, No 10, page 5 and the customs rates from part ii, No 9, Introduction, xix – xx.

2Jenks, Stuart, LCA, Vol 74, part iv, Nos 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14. The volumes are indexed by surname etc. The total exports are taken from Jenks, Stuart (Ed.) The Enrolled Customs Accounts, Part 11 and Part 12 for the figures up to 1516/17. Later figures are recovered from the totals in the detailed accounts. Those for 1517/18 are incomplete, as a result of damage to the originals, but it is reasonable to suppose that the proportion exported by Jenyns is approximately correct.

Table 3: Wool exported by Stephen Jenyns compared with total exports (wool to the nearest sack and customs etc to the nearest £) (*) The total figure for this year is incomplete²

Stephen Jenyns was responsible for more than a fortieth of wool exports from London to Calais in all the years between 1501/02 and 1517/18 for which figures are available. Table 4 shows how this places him in relation to other exporters. The records have been investigated in detail for a selection of the above years. Wool was sometimes exported by partnerships of two merchants. In these cases, the quantity has been split equally between them. These figures include wool-fells.

Table 4: Total exports (wool and skins), to the nearest sack, taking 240 skins as equivalent to 1 sack. Before 1517, totals based on Enrolled Accounts; later totals based on LCA.³

On his first venture as a merchant of the staple, Jenyns was (just) in the top one-third of exporters. It may have been a temporary growth in the wool trade which drew him to it. Between 1485 and 1494 the total of wool and fleeces exported through London to Calais was usually between 4000 and 6000 sacks per year, with a low of 1143 sacks in 1490/91. But quantities rose steadily between 1491 and 1495; 1494/95 and 1495/96 were exceptional years, with 8000 and 7100 sacks respectively. The figure did not then approach 6000 until 1510/11 and was usually in the range 3000 – 5000 sacks. Jenyns perhaps saw an opportunity when there was more than enough wool to be managed by the existing merchants. Richard Craddock of Stafford and Jenyns’ fellow tailor Thomas Randall also appear for the first time in 1495/96. Thereafter, Jenyns remained a significant exporter, generally in the top ten, until almost the end of his life.

It seems certain that the Jenyns operation had a base in Calais. In October 1532, Simon Jenyns (who is named in Jenyns’ will) had to lend his house in Calais as part of the accommodation for the retinue of Francis I of France during his visit to Henry VIII there. Thomas Offley is said to have lost lands in Calais when the French took it in Mary’s reign. Jenyns probably maintained an agent at Calais throughout his period of trading. There is no direct evidence that he travelled to Calais himself, but that also seems quite likely. A set of obligations given by staple merchants, promising that they will not leave Calais for any place under the obedience of the Archduke of Burgundy and will return to England by a specified date, includes many of a similar standing to Jenyns and with Staffordshire connections – Richard Evans and Richard Helyn of Wolverhampton, Richard Craddock of Stafford and John Fitzherbert of Wolverhampton.4

Extending this account to other families and beyond Jenyns’ lifetime, three families with clear Staffordshire links exported wool through London to Calais. The Craddock and Jenyns families, who first appear in 1495/96 were joined in 1501/02 by Nicholas Leveson. He was based in London and Kent and began in a very small way with 2.4 sacks. By 1507/08 his exports had climbed to 104 sacks and he had been joined by his Staffordshire based brother, James, with a smaller contribution of 16 sacks.

Table 5 records the contributions of the three families to the staple exports in the years up to 1542. The following are included:

Jenyns: Stephen; his son-in-law John Nechells; John’s brother Thomas (1509 to 1518); John’s second wife, Margaret (Offley), who exported in her own right while a widow in 1531/32; Margaret’s second husband, Stephen Kyrton, who had been apprenticed to Jenyns; Thomas Offley; Simon Jenyns.

Leveson: the brothers Nicholas and James, Nicholas’s widow Dionisia, who exported in her own right for many years after his death; several of the next generation in both families.

Craddock: Richard of Stafford (d. 1503/04); his son Richard, citizen and draper of London (1501/02 until his death in the 1530s); his son, Edmund, (started 1530/31 but died before 1534). The younger Richard’s daughter, Elizabeth, married another stapler, John Bush of Gloucestershire, but his exports have not been included.5

5The first Richard Cradoke’s will is TNA PROB 11/14/77. The younger Richard’s daughter is mentioned as his heir in several Chancery cases, for example C1/724/42.

6The totals are taken from the Jenks, Stuart (Ed.) The Enrolled Customs Accounts, Part 11 and Part 12 for the figures up to 1516/17 and calculated from the LCA for later years, except that information for 1531/32 and 1541/42 is taken from the original records, Particulars of Accounts for 1531/2, TNA E122 204/6 and for 1541/2, TNA E122 204/9. The printed accounts are in Jenks, Stuart, LCA, Vol 74, part iv, Nos 4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 17 and 18. Volume 16 was not available online at the time this work was completed. Totals for years after 1517 may be underestimated because of damage to the originals.

Table 5: Total exports of three families with Staffordshire links6

These three families accounted for 10% or more of staple exports through London in the majority of years from 1510 to 1535, with a peak of 25% in 1530/31 when total exports were very low. After the death of John Nechells (1530), the Jenyns contribution, represented by Thomas Offley and Stephen Kyrton, fell markedly for a number of years, but by 1539/40 both were exporting large quantities of wool. Although this exploration has not been taken beyond the published accounts (except for one year from original records), Thomas Offley remained a major exporter throughout his life. The inventory taken at his death includes nearly 62 sacks of wool of various grades, valued at £1445, in his wool house in London with a further 2800 lb of wool, valued at £134 at his manor of Madeley in North Staffordshire. This wool was said to have been ‘received out of Staffordshire from William Burton’. Also at Madeley was ‘one old bay gelding that was accustomed to carry packs of wool’.7

Although the three families mentioned have been treated as distinct, they were related. Early records of the Offley family indicate that one of two sisters named Dorynton or Dorrington married Thomas Offley’s father, William, and the other married a Mr Craddock, probably Richard the elder of Stafford. So Thomas was a cousin of Richard Craddock the younger. The Craddocks had property in Lime Street, as did John Nechells. This may have been the link which brought Thomas Offley to Nechells as an apprentice. No direct link between the Leveson and Jenyns families is known, but Richard Leveson was one of the feoffees when Stephen’s mother, Ellen and her second husband John Dauson put her Wolverhampton lands in trust in 1461. By the 1540s, James Leveson had married Margery Offley, sister of Thomas and formerly the wife of Thomas Michell, ironmonger.

These commercial ventures were not without their risks. The staple merchants spread their exports across many ships to reduce the risk of losing large quantities at sea. One instance in which Jenyns did lose merchandise is recorded. The Enrolled Account for 1511/12 refers to 7 sacks and 24 cloves of wool, part of a total cargo of 46 sacks, 20 cloves and 400 woolfells which the merchants were permitted to export In replacement for wool shipped on 6th March 1510 and lost when the Anna of Barking was shipwrecked.8

Jenyns’ probate accounts suggest that, towards the end of his life, he became a member of another trading society, the Company of Merchant Adventurers. Alderman Hardy was paid £6 13s 4d to recompense him for money he had paid for Jenyns’ ‘fredome amongist the merchant adventores’. How old a debt this was is not stated.9

7Inventory of Sir Thomas Offley, TNA PROB 2/423. The beginning of the inventory is missing, so the date of the inventory made at his London house is not clear. This is followed by an inventory of his house at Hackney, also undated, and by the Madeley inventory, made 23rd October 1582

– the day before his will was proved in London.

8Jenks, Stuart The Enrolled Customs Accounts, Part 12, p 2938 9LPL, Probate Accounts, MS1102, f. 12r

5 Later Career

Stephen Jenyns was elected one of the Sheriffs of London on Midsummer Day 1498, to serve for a year from that September. In 1499, he became alderman for Castle Baynard Ward, moving to Dowgate in 1505 and Lime Street Ward in 1508. He remained alderman for this Ward until his death.

Each of the two Sheriffs had their own court, dealing with small debts. Records of these courts do not survive, but Jenyns is mentioned as Sheriff in connection with one inquest later referred to the King’s Bench. On 14th January 1499, Thomas Bradshawe, the coroner, with Sheriffs Thomas Bradbury and Stephen Jenyns held an inquest in the parish of St James, Garlickhithe, into the death of Thomas Harryson, a brewer. The jury found that Harryson, armed with a long staff, had attacked William Zouch, gentleman and that Zouch, in fear of his life, had killed him with a wood knife. In May, Zouch was pardoned by the King on the grounds that he had killed in self-defence.1

Third Marriage

Jenyns’ third marriage was to Margaret, the sister of John Kyrton, a lawyer who was party to many of his land transactions. She was first married to William Buk, a prominent member of the Tailors’ Company who was master in 1488/89. He had substantial business dealings, not in the export and import trade, but in sales of cloth and clothing in England. He supplied cloth to the household of the Dean of St Paul’s throughout the period 1479 – 1497. For example, in the year 1482/83, ‘Medley-coloured woollen cloth for the livery of the Dean’s servants at Christmas’ and ‘Black woollen cloth bought for the livery of the Dean’s servants for the burial of King Edward IV’. He supplied the Great Wardrobe under Henry VII: ‘The aforesaid William Buk for 340 yards of russet cloth at 4s per yard - £68’. There is also a record of an action for debt which he took against the Receiver General of Elizabeth de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk (sister of Edward IV), claiming that £34 4s 8d was owed for cloth which he had supplied.2

William Buk died on 28th March 1501; Margaret had married Stephen Jenyns within a year of his death (she is mentioned as his wife in a suit in the Common Pleas in the Hilary term of 1502). The marriage linked two wealthy families. On 7th June 1503, Jenyns, with Nicholas Nynes, Thomas Randall and William Stalworth entered into recognisances in the City Chamber for payment of £740 6s 8d to John, William, Matthew and Thomas, sons of William and Margaret Buk when they came of age. This is rather more than they had been given in Buk’s will (£100 plus some plate each). Buk’s daughter, Agnes is not mentioned in this bond and was probably already married to Christopher Rawson. William owned a capital messuage and other premises in St Mary Aldermanbury, which were bequeathed to Margaret Buk for her life and then to each of their four sons and their heirs in succession. If all died without children, Agnes, was to inherit. The Inquisition Post Mortem for William Buk was not held until 1532. It may be significant that this was after the death of John Nechells.3

1TNA KB9/419 No 8, King’s Bench indictments, Easter Term 1499 (AALT Image). TNA KB27/951 King’s Bench Plea Roll, Easter Term 1499, m. 6 (Rex) (AALT Image). The date, obscured in the indictment, is clear in the roll.

2Kleineke, Hannes & Hovland, Stephanie R, LRS Volume 40: Household Accounts of William Worsley; TNA E101/416/9, Imperfect Account Books of the Great Wardrobe, p 26, accessed through AALT Image (image 87). Further references to William Buk (images 86 and 87); TNA CP40/907, dorses, image 1131, AALT Image

3TNA CP40/971 fronts, image 55 accessed through aalt law ; LMA, COL/AD/01/012, Letter Book M (Mf copy); Will is TNA PROB 11/12/299; Fry, GS, Abstracts of Inquisitiones pp. 28-43, accessed through British History site

Connections

In 1503 the Tailors and Linen-Armourers secured a new charter from Henry VII and became the Merchant Taylors, a move which was most unpopular with the other companies. A leading light in the negotiation of the new charter was William FitzWilliam (Master in 1499) who was associated with Jenyns and two other tailors, James Wilford and Richard Hills, in the purchase of a messuage in Thames Street in 1495. He became, like Jenyns, a merchant of the staple as well as a tailor, but did not export wool (in the surviving records) until 1507/08. Henry VII required the City to elect him Sheriff in 1506. The King is also said to have played a part in the election of Stephen Jenyns as Mayor in 1508.

The relationship between Jenyns and leading figures of Henry VII’s reign is not clear. As a wealthy man, he would have attracted the attentions of those intent on gathering income for the King. Some in a similar position were persecuted to extract funds, but there is no direct evidence that Jenyns was treated in this way and the Taylors were in favour during the reign, as the grant of a new charter demonstrates. But Jenyns had links with leading figures such as Sir Richard Guildford, Edmund Dudley, Andrew Windsor, George Neville (Lord Bergavenney) and Robert, Lord Willoughby de Broke.

In 1495, Jenyns and his fellow tailor, Thomas Randall, were connected with Guildford in a transfer of premises called The Antelope in Westminster. In 1501, Stephen Jenyns and Edmund Dudley were two of the five feoffees transferring a messuage in St Leonard, Eastcheap to William Stalworth and Thomas Morys. When a Sussex gentleman, Roger Lewknor, was imprisoned for murder, Dudley sold him a pardon in exchange for his estates. In a common recovery during the Hilary Term, 1508, Lewknor’s manor of Sheffield (in Surrey and Sussex) was transferred to feoffees including, besides Windsor and Dudley, both Stephen Jenyns and his brother-in-law John Kyrton.4

There are other links to Dudley. The house in St Mary Aldermanbury which Jenyns occupied after his third marriage was purchased by William Buk from Edmund Dudley. It had previously been owned by John Middleton, a mercer. Middleton’s oldest son, another John, had confirmed in 1482 that his father had left it to his widow, Elizabeth, for her life and then to his younger children, but later it passed into Dudley’s hands. The younger John Middleton was the first husband of Sir Thomas More’s second wife. William Buk’s will mentions an apprentice, Robert Dudeley, who later worked for Jenyns, but his link, if any, to Edmund is unknown.5

More significantly, an undated list headed ‘Here after folow suche sumes of money as I Edmund Dudley must see the kynges hyghnes paid and answered of’ begins: ‘First two thousand poundys that is to say (£1,000) in crownys and oon thousand poundys in Gold which (£2000) was recevyd of Dauncy by the Kynges Warrant in the name of Rasemus Ford for the which (£2000) Stevyn Jenyns Alderman and other or elles other sufficient persons shuld have byn boundyd by Recognisances’. At the foot of this page there is an additional note: ‘Also I must have delyvered to my handys a lytyll box with three obligations for £2000 of Stevyn Jenyns and other’. Bonds therefore existed which would enable pressure to be put on Jenyns if required. The list is undated but must be after 1504, when Dudley began to work directly for the King. When Henry VII died, three former mayors, including Jenyns’ immediate predecessor, Lawrence Aylmer, were in prison on various pretexts and would probably have had to pay for their release. Is it possible that Jenyns would have been treated in a similar way if the King had not died during his term of office?6

Sir Andrew Windsor was Keeper of the Great Wardrobe, perhaps a natural link for Jenyns, but in the limited surviving records, there is no evidence of Jenyns supplying cloth to the Wardrobe. William Buk and William Stalworth, son-in-law of Jenyns, did. Stalworth supplied ‘four and a quarter yards of tawny cloth, price 5s 6d per yard’ and Buk several items, including ‘two and three quarter yards of scarlet cloth, price 11s per yard’ besides the russet cloth mentioned above.7

George Neville, 5th Baron Bergavenny, appears in several documents relating to the purchase by Jenyns of lands in Kent. In 1502, Neville and his wife Joan quitclaimed to feoffees including Jenyns, John Kyrton and William Stalworth, five messuages in Friday Street and Watling Street, London. It was also Bergavenny who sold the manor of Rushock to Jenyns in 1512. He had been fined heavily for retaining during Henry VII’s reign and may have needed to raise money.8

4Penn, Thomas, Winter King, p 263; TNA CP40/983, Common Pleas, Hilary, 1508, AALT Image D924; LMA, Court of Husting, Pleas of Land CLA/023/PL/01/171 m.20

5TNA C 146/5198; PRO 11/12/299 for the Will of William Buk; LPL Probate Accounts MS 1102 f.6r

6TNA SP46/123 Miscellaneous letters and papers f. 148 Memorandum by Edmund Dudley of debts to the crown. Rassmus (Erasmus) Ford appears in the customs accounts. Amounts in () are in roman numerals in the original. Dauncy refers to John Daunce, one of the tellers of the Exchequer. Penn, T, Winter King, p 347

7Undated account, probably 1490s, in TNA E 101/416/9, consulted via AALT Images 86 and 87

8LMA, Court of Husting, Deeds and Wills, CLA/023/DW/01/229 m. 8&9; for Rushock, see later

before him, but there is no evidence to show whether this happened.

9There are two copies of the Chancery Bill: C1/287/38 (AALT Image 0065) and C1/279/41. Details regarding the Queen’s death from Weir, Alison: Elizabeth of York. For Bulstrode as Customer, Jenks, Stuart, The Enrolled Customs Accounts, Part 11, p 2711. The Privy Purse accounts of Henry VII appear in Bentley, Samuel Excerpta Historica (1831), p. 130 (Reference from Wikepedia article Stephen Jenyns.) 10The cases against York and Pawnesfote are in TNA CP40/990, Plea Roll, Hilary Term 1510. r. 334 (dorse) for York and r. 338 (dorse) for Pawnesfote, AALT D0623 and AALT D0632 . The original bond is TNA C146/5525. The Chancery case is TNA C1/348/66, available on AALT Image 117 ; for Broke, Luckett, D.A., The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty, Historical Research Vol 65 (1996) pp. 261-265

Other people named in actions taken by Stephen Jenyns include Robert Poyntz and Robert Throckmorton, both knights, who were involved together in a bond for £100 in a case of 1510. Sir Robert Throckmorton and his son George Throckmorton, Esquire, of Coughton, Warwickshire, were said to owe 200 marks (about £133) in 1512. In 1519, Edward Sutton (Lord Dudley), Humphrey Symandes of Birmingham, gentleman, and William Lynde of Dudley, gentleman were said to owe £88 2s 6d each. In the same year, Thomas Bakon of Hetheset, Suffolk, Gent, Robert Bacon of the same place, yeoman and Thomas Munnyng of Bury St Edmunds, tanner, were pursued for debts of £50 each. There is a case in 1521 against Thomas Tyrell of London, Knight, who had entered into a bond to pay Jenyns 100 marks by 2nd February 1519. Damages of 10 marks were also demanded. The court found for Jenyns, awarding damages of 16s 8d, but at the end of the case it is noted that Stephen Jenyns freely remitted 40 marks of the debt to Tyrell.11

In the Hilary Term of 1523, shortly before his death, Jenyns was pursuing three cases of debt. George Hastyngs of Finchley, knight, owed £50, arising from a bond made in 1515, which should have been paid by Christmas 1516. Thomas Cheyne, knight, of Eastchurch in the Isle of Sheppey, owed £60 on a bond made in November 1520, which should have been paid in the following January. In this case, the court found for Jenyns and awarded damages of 20s. A third case involved George Treheron, gent, and a debt of £6 with 13s 4d damages. This had been awarded to Jenyns in an earlier judgement which he was trying to enforce.

These bonds may relate to purchases of substantial quantities of merchandise on credit, but the Bulstrode case suggests that straightforward loans may also have been involved. Many of the people connected with these cases, notably Robert Willoughby de Broke, the Throckmortons, George Hastings and Thomas Cheyney were significant figures with strong connections to the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. John Pauncefoot was murdered in 1516 while carrying out his duties as a Justice of the Peace.12

Stephen Jenyns’ activities in the acquisition of property and land will be considered later.

In the indexed Common Pleas, only one case has been found in which someone begins an action against Stephen Jenyns. In 1512, George Willoughby, Esquire claimed that he was owed £500 by Jenyns. The outcome of this case has not been traced.

Mayor

Stephen Jenyns was elected Mayor of London at Michaelmas 1508 (with the support of Henry VII), taking office early in November. On 21st April of the following year, the King died. On Wednesday May 9th, the King’s funeral procession coming from Richmond, ‘the Mayor and his brethren, with many commoners, all clothed in blacke, met with the corps at London Bridge, and so gave their attendance through the citee’ to St Paul’s Cathedral. On the following day, the Mayor and Aldermen travelled by barge to Westminster for the ‘masse and offering’; ‘the mayor, with his mace in his hand, made his offering next after the Lord Chamberlain’. The funeral took place over two days, at the end of which the mourners ‘departed to the Palaice where they had a greate and a sumptuous feast’.13

On 23rd June 1509, Henry VIII and his Queen processed from the Tower by way of Cornhill and Cheapside to St Paul’s and then on to Westminster. Hall records that the streets were hung with tapestries and the freemen of the various crafts in increasing order of importance lined the route leading up to St Paul’s and ‘highest and lastly stode the Mayor, with the aldermen’. The King and Queen were crowned at Westminster Abbey the following day, 24th June 1509, after which they proceeded to Westminster Hall for the Coronation Banquet. Having described the feast, the Chronicle continues ‘Then Sir Stephen Jenyns, that time Mayor of London, whom the kyng before he satte doune to dynner had dubbed knight, whiche beganne the Erles Table that daie, arose from the place where he satte, to serve the Kyng with Ipocras, in a Cuppe of Golde, whiche Cuppe, after his grace had dronken thereof, was with the cover, geven unto the said sir Stephen, like as other his predecessors, Mayors of the saied citie, were wont to have at the coronacion of the kyng.’ Another source notes, however, that the new knight had ‘paid his fee as a baron’, suggesting that his honour did not come without cost.14

11Jenyns vs Poyntz & Throckmorton is CP40/990 (Hilary 1510) AALT Image_D0895 and the next image. Jenyns vs Robert and George Throckmorton is CP40/998 (Hilary 1512), AALT Image D0159 For Jenyns vs Edward Sutton et al , CP40/1023 (Hilary 1519) AALT Image D0814 and on the same roll, Jenyns vs Bakon et al AALT Images D0217 (with further on Fronts 0971 and 1289). For Jenyns vs Tyrell, CP40/1033 (Trinity 1521), AALT Image 0517 .

12These are all are in CP 40/1038 (Hilary 1523). Jenyns vs Hastyngs is AALT Image D0420; Jenyns vs Cheyne is AALT Image D0251 and Jenyns vs Treheron is AALT Image D1078. For the murder of John Pauncefoot, ‘Parishes: Hasfield’, in Elrington, Gloucestershire, pp. 282-290 (British History online)

13Brewer, Letters & Papers, Vol. 1: ‘Henry VIII: May 1509, 4-5’, pp. 8-24; Sharpe, R R London and the Kingdom Vol 1, 1848, p294; Hall, Edward, Chronicle, p 506. The ‘mace’ refers to the Crystal Sceptre of the City, borne by the present Lord Mayor at the Coronation of Charles III.

14Hall, Edward, Chronicle, pp 507 – 510; Brewer, Letters & Papers, Vol. 1: ‘Henry VIII: May 1509, 4-5’, pp. 8-24

As Mayor, Stephen Jenyns sat as a justice in the Court of Husting and the Mayor’s Court. He also found himself in the commission appointed by the new King to investigate Edmund Dudley. The trial is reported in other sources, but a full account also occurs in a later case in the Common Pleas. The background of this later case is not relevant here, but an account of the trial is given in evidence.

On 12th July 1509, Sir Stephen Jenyns sat in the first stage of the inquiry at Guildhall with Sir Thomas Fiennes of Dacre, Sir John Fyneux, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, Sir Robert Rede, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir William Hody, Chief Baron of the Exchequer and six others who found that, on the 22nd April (at the beginning of the reign) Edmund had conspired with others (including his cousin, Edward Sutton of Dudley) to bring armed men to London to manipulate the succession, which constituted treason. On the following Monday, 16th July, Dudley was brought again from the Tower to Guildhall, where he was charged with these offences before a larger and grander panel of Judges, headed by Edward, Duke of Buckingham, Henry, Earl of Northumberland, Thomas, Earl of Surrey and Stephen Jenyns, knight, mayor of the city of London (with 22 others). Two days later, the jury found Dudley guilty of treason. He was then sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. The charges against Dudley and Richard Empson are generally agreed to have been manufactured; their real unpopularity arose from their financial exactions during the previous reign which made them convenient scapegoats.15

In the first Pardon Roll of the new reign, both Stephen Jenyns and his wife are listed, in these words:

‘Stephen Jenyns or Jennyns, of London, merchant tailor, alderman, merchant of the Staple of Calais, executor of Rose Swanne, widow and executrix of John Swanne, alderman of London; also Margaret his wife, late the wife of Wm. Buk, alias Margaret Kirketon, gentle-woman, 21 May.’16

The mention of the wills of both Rose and John Swan may suggest that there had been disputes about sums owed to the crown by John Swan; the inclusion of Margaret Jenyns may indicate similar difficulties concerning William Buk’s estate.

Though little relating to Jenyns’ work in the London Courts survives, cases transferred to the King’s Bench have left a record. An idea of the variety of cases heard is given by four from October 1509. On 15th October, sitting with the Justices for the delivery of Newgate Gaol, he heard a case concerning Richard Reynold of London, yeoman, who had been charged in Middlesex with theft from the house of a widow at Edmonton and found guilty. He had argued that he should not be sentenced to death by pleading benefit of clergy, that is, claiming that he was in minor clerical orders. A representative of the Bishop of London appeared in the court with information that Reynold had been married; his claim was therefore invalid. William Haynes, yeoman of Loughborough was brought before the court charged with assaulting and robbing Thomas Wode in Kensington. He was found guilty by the jury. John Stileman was found guilty of counterfeiting and passing coins (made of tin and lead) and committed to Newgate.

On 20th October the same John Stileman of Reading, weaver, appeared before Jenyns and other Aldermen in the Mayor’s Court. He was charged with expressing heretical views, for example, denying the real presence in the eucharist, saying that there was no value in going on pilgrimage and that priests were but scribes and pharisees. He is reported to have said that he gave more credence to Wyclyf’s book and to the teaching of Smert (Richard Smart) his master who had been burnt at Salisbury than to any other doctrine. Stileman had abjured his beliefs before the Bishop of Salisbury two years before, but now said that he never forsook God but when he abjured. He is said to have expressed these opinions in the King’s counting house in the parish of All Hallows, Bread Street in the presence of John Egleston (possibly Eccleston, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge) and John Wilcock, both professors of theology. This denial of his previous abjuration could have been very serious for him but Stileman survived on this occasion. He was burnt on similar charges in 1518, as the account in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs shows.17

In the London Courts, the Mayor sat with a number of Aldermen. Although he will not have had the regular involvement he had during his Mayoralty, Stephen Jenyns remained an Alderman and therefore a Justice of the Peace in the city for the rest of his life. It is also recorded that, in 1520, he was admitted a member of Gray’s Inn.18

A final mention on the national scene occurs In the King’s Book of Payments for 1519, where it is recorded that Stephen Jenyns, alongside the Master of the Wardrobe, Andrew Windsor and Lord Bergavenney, was among those given ‘rewards’ on New Year’s Day.19

15The account of the trial is in TNA CP40/1040, Trinity Term, 1523 m. 430 - 431, from AALT Image F0870 and two following images and AALT Image D0787 and the following image; for the background, Penn, Thomas, Winter King, pp 366-7 16Brewer, Letters & Papers, Vol. 1:’ Henry VIII: Pardon Roll, Part 1’ pp 203 – 216. 17TNA KB9/452 No 61 King’s Bench Indictments, Michaelmas Term 1509 (AALT Image 121); British Museum account from Foxe for details of Stileman’s life. The appearance in King’s Bench has not been traced, 18Baker, Sir John, The Men of Court, 1440 – 1550, entry for Stephen Jenyns 19Brewer, Letters & Papers, Vol. 3: ‘The King’s Book of Payments, 1519’, pp 1522 – 1539.

8 TNA London Tax List E179/251/15B, f. 57v. © Crown Copyright, 2023. Used by permission.

An estimate of Sir Stephen’s wealth at the end of his life survives In an undated volume of London assessments which must predate the subsidy granted to Henry VIII in 1523 and perhaps relates to the ‘anticipation’, assessed on wealthier people in the previous year. Jenyns is listed in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury:

Several of those named are linked to him or to his trade. John Reymes (100 marks) had probably been an apprentice of Jenyns and worked for him for many years. Thomas Buck (£500) was one of his step-sons. John Cowlard (£250) appears in the customs accounts, exporting large quantities of fleeces and some wool, from the middle of the 1510s onwards. William Browne, mercer, (£1991) was one of a long family of that name, prominent in the Staple trade.

Stephen Jenyns, Taylor and Alderman, is assessed at £3500. Had he lived to pay the subsidy granted in 1523 and collected the following year, he would have been required to pay at a rate of one twentieth (1s per pound), giving a figure of £175. The total payment for the whole of the Staffordshire hundred of Seisdon (stretching from Kinver in the SW to Bushbury and Wolverhampton in the NE) in 1524 was £105. The richest man in Wolverhampton, James Leveson, who has already featured here as a staple merchant, was assessed at 303 marks (£202) and charged tax of £10 2s – though he should have been charged £20 4s, as wealthier people paid at a higher rate. Even so, his wealth appears to have been a fraction of Stephen Jenyns’. Tax was paid either on income from land or on goods, according to which produced the greatest income for the Crown, so it may be that Leveson had a balance of income from land and ownership of goods which give him an advantage over Jenyns.20

20TNA E179/251/15B, f. 57v for the London list. Seisdon from Sheail, John, List & Index Soc. Special Series Vol 29, The Gazetteer (1998) p 318; Mander, GP, Lay Subsidy for Wolverhampton and Bilston, 1524 in The Wolverhampton Antiquary, Vol. 1, No 6, (1920), p 187

6 Property

Wolverhampton

It has long been assumed that the original site of the School in John Street was land owned by Stephen Jenyns, but no documents survive. Three of the early Crewe documents mention land in Wolverhampton, but ‘a piece of land .... lying in Wolverhampton called Catebruche’ (1445) cannot be identified and the other documents give no details at all. The presence of John Jenyns’ copy for his mother’s lands among the Crewe documents suggests that Stephen bought it from his brother.1

The records of the Dean’s Court for his Manor of Wolverhampton have not survived, so these fragments are all there are. Equally unhelpful is a note amongst the Sutherland Papers which indicates that, shortly before his death, Stephen Jenyns surrendered all his lands (unspecified) in Wolverhampton to John Nechells.2

John Nechells himself also inherited land in Wolverhampton. On 2nd April 1515 his attorneys appeared in the Dean’s Court to lay claim to the lands of his father, Richard. Some were held by copy of court roll; for these he paid a fine of 6s. Others were freehold, for which he paid a relief of 3s 3d. The description is simply ‘lands and tenements’.3

It is clear that the lands of the Jenyns family, inherited from the Lanes, and those of the Nechells family, all came to John Nechells and would have passed to Thomas Offley and his heirs, through Joan Offley. But their location within Wolverhampton remains a mystery.

The following sequence of dates in 1515 is of interest:

2nd April John Nechells claimed his father’s lands in the Dean’s Court.

24th April The Merchant Taylors paid Henry Roch, for ‘viewing’ their School

25th May Stephen Jenyns executed the deed which transferred ownership of the Manor of Rushock to the Taylors.

Could this suggest that the School was established, at least in part, on Nechells’ lands?

In 1605 Henry Offley, son of Sir Thomas, gave the school a ‘little parcell of ground scituate upon the back parte of the schoole in Wolverhampton’ containing about one-fifth of an acre, for the use of the schoolmaster and scholars for ever. This is said to have been copyhold land, but whether it originally belonged to Jenyns or was part of John Nechells’ inheritance from his father cannot be known. It also seems likely that some of Nechells’ land passed to the Levesons, possibly charged with the payment of £1 a year to the usher, as mentioned by Mander.4

1CRO, Crewe Collection, DCR 26/3b/9; DCR 35/9/22; DCR 19/8C/4

2SRO, Sutherland Papers, D593/J/5/8/2 (List of Admissions and Surrenders in several manors, made in the seventeenth century, but including transactions from the 14th Century onwards.)

3CRO, Crewe Collection, DCR 35/9/25 & 26; 4Mander, Appendix 7 (pp 371-2) for Henry Offley’s Gift and pp 14 – 15 for Nechells’ £1.

London

Approximate locations for some of the London properties associated with Stephen Jenyns can be identified. In some transactions, however, his precise role is uncertain. The practice of putting property in the hands of feoffees ‘for the use’ of a particular individual and his or her descendants was very common and the legal documents which survive may not identify the intended owner.

In 1495 Stephen Jenyns was resident in the parish of All Hallows the Great. The parish lay largely between Thames Street (where the church stood) and the River; with its neighbouring parish of All Hallows the Less, it occupied much of the north bank between the present Southwark and London Bridges and contained the Steelyard (headquarters of the Hanseatic merchants in London) and the Haywharf. Jenyns is said to have leased a shop and residence here for over two decades from Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham; the inquisition taken in 1525 after the Duke’s death refers to ‘24s rent issuing out of 1 messuage in the parish of All Saints Major, in which Stephen Jenyns knight lately dwelt’.5

Stephen Jenyns was also associated with other premises in these parishes. In 1487, with others, he acquired lands and tenements in Haywharf Lane, adjoining the Steelyard and two shops with solars, all in that parish. In 1488/89, eight messuages and a garden in All Hallows the Less were recovered by Stephen Jenyns and Thomas Vogator. In these cases it is hard identify the principal beneficiary. In 1495, with three other tailors, including William FitzWilliam, he acquired a messuage in Thames Street in the parish of All Hallows the Great from Valentine Dryland and Joan his wife. In view of other links with this family, this is perhaps the most likely to have come into Jenyns’ actual possession. It may be the messuage assigned by Jenyns to John Bennet and bequeathed by Bennet to the Merchant Taylors to fund the obit for Jenyns’ soul. Whether or not through this particular purchase, Jenyns certainly owned a ‘messuage or tenement with the appurtenances in the parish of All Hallows the More in Thames Street of London, between the Church of All Hallows on the west part and the lane called Wolsy Lane on the East part and extending from the King’s Highway of Thames Street against the north unto the lands and tenements sometime Nicholas Loveyne knight against the south, where William Barons now dwells.’ It must therefore have stood just to the east of the Church in Thames Street, though there is no longer a Church on the site. Further premises in All Hallows (both parishes) changed hands in 1496 and 1498, but the ownership is not clear.6

On his marriage to Margaret Buk, Jenyns came into possession of premises owned by William Buk in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury, in which she had a life interest. These premises had two parts. The main house was a ‘capital messuage ....... in the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury of London, with all its appurtenances and a certain postern to the said capital messuage belonging leading from the same capital messuage as far as the graveyard of the church of St Laurence in Old Jewry’, which William Buk bought from Edmund Dudley. The second is described, in a release from Edmund Dudley himself to Buk, as ‘four messuages ... situated in the parishes of St Mary Aldermanbury .. and St Lawrence in Old Jewry ... in the wards of Crepulgate and Chepe ..., containing 93 feet and 4 inches along the King’s way there, between the tenement late of Elizabeth, Lady Clinton , late John Russell knight, now belonging to the parish of St Mary Aldermanbury to the north and the tenement late of John Worsted, mercer, now belonging to the canons regular of Elsing’s Spital ... to the south and extending from the King’s way there to the west to the lands of the Guildhall of London to the east’. The inquisition taken after the death of Thomas Buk, William’s fourth son states that the four messuages were adjacent to the main house, while Buk’s IPM, not taken until 1532, says that it was the garden of the house which lay in St Laurence parish, the house itself being in St Mary’s.7

These details put the premises on the east side of Aldermanbury at its southern end, where the Guildhall, in Basinghall Street, stood behind the houses. The main premises, with their postern leading to the graveyard of of St Lawrence, seem more likely to have been at the southern end. William Buk acquired these premises only towards the end of his life. The release of the four messuages is dated 1st April 1500 and refers to a recovery of the premises by Andrew and John Windsor on 4th July 1499; Buk died in 1501.8

The Aldermanbury premises stayed with Stephen Jenyns until his death and ultimately passed to the descendants of William and Margaret Buk’s daughter Agnes, who had married Christopher Rawson. William’s inquisition states that the premises were held of the King in free burgage and worth 20 marks per year. It is not clear whether Stephen Jenyns lived in the main house here from the time of his marriage to Margaret. It was, however, to the Church of St Mary Aldermanbury that they presented books of epistles and gospels in 1509, so it seems probable that they were resident by then.9

5Ledward, Close Rolls, Henry VII, Vol 1, No 793, July 22nd 1495 for the reference to the parish; Furdell, Elizabeth L, ODNB, Stephen Jenyns, mentions the Buckingham lease; Fry, GS, Inquisitions, Part 1 pp. 60-78 for the Duke’s Inquisition.

6LMA, Deeds and Wills, CLA/023/DW/01/217, m. 3 no. 14; Pleas of Land CLA/023/PL/169 m.10, CLA/023/PL/170 m.7d, CLA/023/PL/170 m. 13, CLA/023/PL/170 m.26; John Benett’s will given in Mander, pp 357 – 363. Spelling modernised in these extracts.

7TNA C 147/201, a deed of Matthew Buck dated 31st January 1519 describes the capital messuage; E40/1492 is the release of Edmund Dudley to William Buk in 1500.; Fry, GS, Inquisitions Part 1 (London, 1896) pp. 43-60, William Buk.

8William Buk’s will: TNA PROB 11/12/299

9Buk’s inquisition pm, see note 7

In 1502, Stephen Jenyns was one of nine people involved in a transfer of eight messuages in the parish of St Augustine near Paul’s gate. His limited will of 1518 gives details of the transaction, which also involved John Kyrton, Christopher Rawson, William Stalworth, Clement Clerk and John Haddes, who was the former owner of the property, which he had inherited from Valentine Dryland of Selling, Kent. The 8 messuages are described as follows:

‘five being set and lie in the Old Change in the parish of St Austen next the Cathedral Church of Saint Paul in the Ward of Bredstrete in the City of London aforesaid. And the other three, residue of the aforesaid eight messuages be set and lie in Distaff Lane in the parish and ward aforesaid.’

The Old Change ran roughly parallel to the present New Change but was further west, nearer to the Cathedral, and Distaff Lane was a name for a road roughly on the line of the present Cannon Street (and not the same as the present Distaff Lane), so these houses lay on a corner to the south east of St Paul’s which is no longer a street. There is no suggestion that Jenyns ever lived in these premises; presumably they were rented. He gave them for charitable purposes which will be discussed later.

Jenyns’ probate accounts show that he possessed a house at Stratford, of which nothing further is known. John Nechells had a house at Hackney, probably corresponding to that inventoried when Thomas Offley died.10

10LMA Pleas of Land, CLA/023/PL/172 m.6; TNA LR 15/5 (Will of Stephen Jenyns in regard to these 8 messuages). LPL, Probate Accounts, MS 1102. f. 9r (Stratford); 10v, 11r, 14r for Hackney; TNA PROB 2/423

Stephen Jenyns and London

Wards

Castle Baynard Stephen Jenyns, Alderman, 1499 - 1505

Dowgate Stephen Jenyns, Alderman, 1505 - 1508

Lime Street Stephen Jenyns, Alderman, 1508 - 1523

Aldgate Thomas Offley, Alderman, 1550 - 1582

John Nechells was elected Alderman for Broad Street Ward (not shown), July 1525, but was discharged on a plea of infirmity in January 1526, paying a fine of 300 marks. Thomas Offley was briefly Alderman for Portsoken Ward (east of Aldgate), 1549-50.

Property linked to Stephen Jenyns

‘a tenement .. in the Parishe of All hallowes the more in Thamestrete of London between the Churche of Alehollowes on the West partie and the lane called Wolfes Lane one the Easte’. This is only one of several premises in the parishes of All Hallows the Great and the Less mentioned in connection with Jenyns, and may be the one he is recorded as obtaining in 1495.

Approximate position of William Buk’s house in St Mary Aldermanbury, which came into Jenyns’ hands when he married Buk’s widow and returned to the Buk family after his death. Records make clear that it was on the east of Aldermanbury and since it had a ‘back way’ to the Churchyard of St Laurence in Old Jewry, it must have been at the southern end.

Jenyns endowed Elsing’s Spital with 8 messuages in the parish of St Augustine and ward of Bread Street, 5 of which were in the Old Change and the other 3 in Distaff Lane. The Old Change lay to the west of the present New Change, now in a pedestrian area, and Distaff Lane was on a line approximating to the present Cannon Street.

Approximate location for premises in Lime Street ‘which were a third part of Typtot’s’ and were the home of John and Katherine Nechells. Nechells was assessed in Aldgate Ward in 1522, so they must have been on the east side of the street and boundaries in another record suggest they were at the north end.

Public and Religious Buildings

Approximate position of the Greyfriars, where Jenyns was buried in 1523 St Martin’s Ludgate, in which parish he either rented or owned a property St Paul’s Cathedral

Approximate outline of the parish of St Michael Le Querne where Thomas Pye, to whom Jenyns was bound apprentice in 1462/3, was resident c. 1460. Jenyns may therefore have lived in this area when he first came to London.

Church of St Augustine – parish in which premises bequeathed by Jenyns to Elsing’s Spital lay.

Church of All Hallows the Great in Thames Street. Jenyns is recorded as resident in this parish in 1495 and had dealings with several properties here and the adjacent parish of All Hallows the Less.

Church of St Mary Aldermanbury, where Jenyns’ third wife was buried with her first husband, William Buk.

Stephen and Margaret Jenyns presented this Church with books of Epistles and Gospels in the year of his Mayoralty.

Church of St Andrew Undershaft. Extensive work was done here at Jenyns’ charge from 1520 onwards. Heraldic glass from the Church is now in Big School (WGS). Burial place of John Nechells (and probably of his wife, Katherine, Jenyns’ daughter) and of Thomas and Joan Offley. The only building mentioned here to survive in its pre-fire form, though much changed.

Merchant Taylors’ Hall

Approximate position of Elsing’s Spital. It lay at the junction of London Wall and Aldermanbury, but the road called London Wall has since been moved southwards and Aldermanbury no longer joins it. The Hospital was within the walls.

Reference has already been made to a ‘house’ of Stephen Jenyns in the parish of St Martin, Ludgate (which lies to the west of St Paul’s). The fact that it was John Reymes, who worked for Jenyns for many years, who was attacked there suggests that it might have been used for business. It is not known whether it was rented or owned by Jenyns and nothing is known of its location. It is interesting, however, that both William Stalworth and Charles White, the two husbands of Jenyns’ daughter Elizabeth, state in their wills that they are resident in the parish of St Martin, Ludgate. Both bequeathed money to the parish for their tithes forgotten, as was customary. William Stalworth also bequeathed ‘a canopy of black damask with an orfreys of gold metal work of fine gold embroidered with flowers of fine gold’. The Ludgate property may have been provided for Elizabeth.11

The final London property with a very definite connection to Jenyns and his family came to them in 1509, the year of his mayoralty. Premises in Lime Street were purchased from Sir Richard Wentworth of Nettlestead, Suffolk and settled on John Nechells, his wife Katherine and the heirs of Nechells. As far as the documents go, Nechells could have been the purchaser, but it seems more likely that Jenyns paid, though Nechells had been trading overseas for some time. The description is ‘all that our messuage, lands, tenement, curtilage and garden with their appurtenances being and lying in the parish of St Andrew Undershaft within the city of London in a street called Lymestrete or elsewhere in the said city, which were a third part of Tiptots’. It had been acquired through a writ of right in the Hustings of London held on Monday 22nd January 1509, in which it is described as three messuages and three gardens (this is stated in the deed). A quitclaim of the premises by Richard Wentworth is recorded in 1511.12

The reference to ‘a third part of Tiptots’ is clarified by a document in Norman French, dated 10th December 1385 and surviving among the Crewe papers. ‘A third part of Tiptofts’ might be more accurate. The document sets out the division of the estates of Robert Tiptoft or Tybetot between his three daughters. One of these, Elizabeth, the wife of Philip Le Despenser, was the ancestor of Richard Wentworth. Although the document contains long lists of lands in many parts of the country and allots each manor to a daughter, it is vague about the London property, which, after the expiry of a life interest held by Gervase Clifton, is to be held in common between all three. It appears that at some point in the intervening 120 years, the London property had been divided.

9 The ornate opening of the deed conveying the Lime Street property to John Nechells

A second deed shows that, after the death of John Nechells, the surviving trustee of the settlement assigned the property to his daughter Joan, the wife of Thomas Offley.

Both sides of Lime Street were in the parish of St Andrew. But the east side of the street was in the Ward of Aldgate, while the west was in the Ward of Lime Street. Since John Nechells was assessed in 1522 in Aldgate, his house must have been on the east of the street. A helpful catalogue listing of a document in the Canterbury Cathedral Archives mentions John Nechells’ premises in relation to the boundaries of another property: “a brewhouse and garden formerly called 'the Pott over the hoope' now 'the Pewter Pott', late of Robert Ryder, lying in St Andrew Undershaft parish, London, in Aldgate ward, with the messuage of the prioress and convent of Haliwell Priory [Shoreditch] to east, the tenement late of Robert Ryder to west, ‘algate strete' to north, and the garden of John Nychill, late of John Typtoft, to south.” This indicates that the property is likely to have been close to the junction of Lime Street and what is now Leadenhall Street, perhaps the first or second house, assuming that Robert Ryder’s tenement was in Aldgate Street itself. It is also interesting that the description ‘late of John Typtoft’ is being used in 1520, though he died before 1385. Thomas Offley also paid tax in Aldgate ward in 1582, just before he died; he was the Alderman for the Ward and the commissioner for the collection of the tax there. His inventory records that his executors paid £17 to the collectors of Aldgate Ward for the last payment of the subsidy.13

11TNA PROB 11/19/306, Will of William Stalworth; PROB 11/36/231, Will of Charles White 12LMA Pleas of Land CLA/023/PL/172 m.31; Deeds and Wills, CLA/023/DW/236 m.38 or 39; original deed at WGS 13TNA E179/251/15B, f. 44 for John Nechell’s assessment; Listing on TNA Discovery for CCA-DCc-ChAnt/L/109 (Canterbury Cathedral Archives); Lang, RG, Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls, '1582 London Subsidy Roll: Aldgate Ward' pp. 131-140; TNA PROB 2/423 is the inventory.

The surviving part of the inventory of Offley’s estate begins after the main rooms of the house have been listed. Nevertheless, it gives an idea of the Lime Street property. The first room listed in full is the ‘chamber over the gate’ and a courtyard is also recorded, presumably lying beyond the gate. A ‘little chamber’ contains, among other things, ‘an old picture of King Henry’, ‘three stories uppon cloth with frames’ and ‘the Quens arms uppon cloth’. Listed after the courtyard, suggesting that they might be outside the main building, are the cook’s chamber and ‘Raymans’ chamber. Outbuildings then include a back kitchen, a coal house, a hay loft, a saddle house, a stable (containing at the time of the inventory only ‘a browne bay nagge’), a wood house and a wool house. The house has a beef cellar, a great cellar, a wine cellar, a ‘pastry’ and a kitchen. There are a ‘compting house’ and a scullery yard. There is also listed ‘at the garden dore one chayre of woode’, worth 16d, suggesting that the aged Sir Thomas perhaps liked to sit and look out into the garden mentioned earlier. But this was clearly a place of business as well as a home; he also possessed a house at Hackney.14

Kent

Stephen Jenyns began to purchase lands in and around the parish of Selling, near Faversham, in 1502 and continued to extend his property there until 1509. In 1518, he sold the whole estate he had so carefully accumulated to Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, who made it part of his endowment of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The College retains a large number of documents relating to the lands. Two key questions remain: what was his purpose in buying the land and, having apparently achieved his aims, why did he sell?

The first relevant document is the will of Raynold Dryland of Selling, dated 5th February 1445, in which he divides his properties in Kent between his five sons, the ‘place’ of Harefield in Selling being given to his son Robert. Raynold was dead by 1448, leaving a widow, Christian. Stephen Jenyns’ purchases in Selling were largely from the Haddes family, whose link to the Drylands is set out many times in the documents. Raynold’s son Robert had two surviving children, Valentine, and Anne. Anne Dryland had married John Haddes of Goudhurst and they had three sons, John, William and Robert. Valentine inherited Harefield but died without children, so his property descended to his sister’s heirs. It was subject to the Kent custom of gavelkind, so was divided between the male heirs rather than passing to the oldest. Several separate purchases were needed to allow Jenyns to acquire the whole estate. He also seems to have purchased land from the sons of Raynold Dryland’s second son, John and some land which was originally given to another son, Bartholomew. A further complication was that Valentine Dryland’s widow, Joan, now married to Thomas Wood, retained a life interest in some of the property.

Harefield is sometimes described as a manor, as is another of the properties, Perywood. Few manorial documents survive, but there is a short roll for Perywood, showing Jenyns as lord of the manor:

10 Court Roll of Perywood, 12th Oct 1507. Corpus Christi College, Oxford, Hb 1/1 © Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 2023. Used by permission.

‘The Court of Stephen Jennyn citizen & Alderman of London, held there on the 12th day of the month of October in the 23rd year of the reign of King Henry VII, in the time of Robert Wythiott, steward there.’

It has already been noted that Jenyns acquired some London property from John Haddes. The eight messuages near St Paul’s were bought from him as the heir of Valentine Dryland (London property not being subject to gavelkind he had inherited the whole) at about the same time as he began to purchase in Kent and Valentine himself, as early as 1495, had transferred a property in All Hallows the Great to a group including Jenyns.

Raynold Dryland’s wife was the sister of Alice, the wife of William Goldwell of Great Chart. This might explain how Jenyns became aware of the opportunity to acquire land around Selling.15

14TNA PROB 2/423 Inventory of Sir Thomas Offley

15TNA E326/3214 Release by Alice Goldwell and Cristina Drylond, widows, 1473

Although most of the land was in that parish, by 1509 he also owned land in the parishes of Sheldwich, Chilham, Whitstable, Pluckley, Seasalter, Boughton Blean and Graveney. He sold the whole for £900, 24 times the expected annual value of £37 10s. He made a careful agreement with the Bishop which states that if the annual income proved to be greater than this, the Bishop would pay twenty four times the difference to Jenyns and if the value was less, Jenyns would pay the Bishop.

Did Stephen Jenyns originally intend these lands to pass to one of his own or his wife’s descendants? Margaret Jenyns’ eldest son William died childless in 1514 and his will indicates that his brother John had died before him. Jenyns’ daughter Katherine Nechells died before him, but the date is not known. But both Stephen and Margaret still had living descendants in 1517, when moves towards the sale began. In establishing his title to the land in preparation for the sale to the Bishop, Jenyns was careful to include a wide range of family members. A document of 1517 mentions his wife, her brother John Kyrton and brother-in-law Henry Tyngleden, her surviving sons Thomas and Matthew Buk and son-in-law Christopher Rawson and Jenyns own son-in-law, John Nechells, though not William Stalworth. The evidence of the Probate Accounts suggests that at this point Jenyns intended the value of the property to be divided between a number of his own and his wife’s connections. £160 was paid from Jenyns’ estate to two of John Kyrton’s daughters, Margaret and Elizabeth, on their marriages and is explicitly stated to be the proceeds of part of the sale; John Nechells also retains £168 which is stated to be the value of the Manor of Harfield. The remaining £572 of the sale price must have been distributed to other connections before Jenyns’ death. In the light of the bond regarding payments to the Buk descendants, the most likely explanation is that the investment in land was made to secure their inheritance and that it

Another feature of the deeds concerning Selling is the distinction of some of the feoffees. Apart from close relations, they include Sir Thomas Frowyk, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, Sir Robert Rede, Justice of the King’s Bench (who

11 Seals from a deed dated 6th December 1506, in which Jenyns and his wife, Kyrton and Nechells appoint attorneys to

First seal is Stephen Jenyns. The last appears to be an adapted version, but whether it belongs to his wife or his son-onlaw is uncertain. The third could be a ‘buck’, from Margaret Jenyns’ first husband or might belong to John Kyrton.

When administering Jenyns’ estate in 1527, John Nechells paid John Silk, thatcher, 26s 8d for work done in thatching Stephen Jenyns’ houses at Sellyng in Kent. His total bill had been 38s 3d and Jenyns had paid him ‘at diverse times’ 16s. Since there is no evidence that Jenyns owned any property in Selling after 1518, the 4s 5d paid over and above the

By an action in the Common Pleas in 1514, Jenyns acquired from John Moyle lands described as ‘the manor of Barkley, 2 messuages, 160 acres of land, 100 acres of pasture, 80 acres of woodland and 5s of rent’ in Bedenden (probably Biddenden) in Kent. No such manor has been traced, but the inquisition after the death of another John Moyle in 1500 mentions lands in Biddenden and Staplehurst amongst many others and makes John Kyrton (whose sister was soon to marry Jenyns) one of his feoffees. There is a later reference to Jenyns selling or giving some property at Staplehurst, Kent to Thomas Buck. Nothing else is known of these transactions, but they may be connected.18

It seems likely that Jenyns had a stronger link to Kent, especially the area around Cranbrook, than has so far been established.

Letter Book M, COL/AD/01/012, Nov 9th 10 Henry VIII 17LPL MS 1102, Probate Accounts, f. 17v 18TNA CP40/1005B, Hilary 1514, AALT Image D0603; Maskelyne, Calendar of Inquisitions, No 246; TNA C146/7453, List of deeds given to Thomas Buck by Stephen Jenyns

Rushock

In comparison with the complications of the purchases in Kent, the story of the Rushock estate is straightforward. The formal legal transfer of the lands to Jenyns is recorded in the Court of Common Pleas in the Easter Term of 1512, that is, roughly, in late April or May. At this stage, the lands were held by John Nechells, William Barons and John Bonnde, but they were actually being sold by George Neville, Lord Bergavenny. Although, as Mander states, the manor was held for many years by the Sturmy family, it had reverted by 1411 to William Beauchamp, Lord Bergavenny, who died in possession in that year. His granddaughter Elizabeth later inherited his lands and married Sir Edward Neville. George Neville, the 5th Baron Bergavenny was their grandson. He had also had a part to play in Jenyns’ transactions in Kent. After the initial hearing, Jenyns returned to court in person on the morrow of the Ascension (21st May) and it was recorded that he had been put in possession of the Manor of Rushock next Chaddesley Corbett with its appurtenances on 14th May.19

On 22nd September 1512, Henry VIII granted his licence to Jenyns to give the Merchant Taylors lands to the value of £20 per year to support the School. This licence does not specify the lands, but on 12th April 1513 the King granted a second licence which allowed him to give them the ‘Manor of Rushock next Chaddesley Corbett with its appurtenances in Rushock in the county of Worcester’, which are held from the King as from his Barony of Elmley Castle by a rent of 2s per annum and are worth £15 of the total permitted sum of £20 for the support of the master and usher of the School. Two years were to pass before the transfer was made; on Tuesday 5th June 1515 at Rushock, between the hours of 10 and 11 in the morning, John Nechells, John Greene and John Harrington, attorneys for Jenyns, gave possession and seisin of the manor to William Barons, attorney for the Master, Henry Dacres, and Wardens of the Merchant Taylors in the presence of a great number of witnesses, including John Jenyns (possibly Stephen’s brother), William Offley (possibly a brother of Thomas), Thomas Nechells (John had a brother of this name), Richard Underhill (who appears as steward of the Dean’s Manor of Wolverhampton in this period) and a number of the tenants of the Manor of Rushock.20

Shortly after they had received the estate, the Taylors ‘made an estate of it back to Sir Stephen’. The Taylors also arranged a survey of the manor which was made on 16th March 1516 by Thomas Roche. This found that there was 800 acres in the hands of the ‘chief farmer’ of the estate, most of it good arable land, at a rent of £18, but then contradicts the earlier information by saying that a total of 10s 7d is due to the King each year. William Loyte is described as the chief farmer (presumably the William Lett who witnessed the transfer of land). Copyhold and freehold tenants are listed; Roger Pillett and William Insall are tenants who appeared previously as witnesses.21

Property Elsewhere

As has been mentioned, in 1483, Stephen Jenyns bought from Peter Pemberton ‘a messuage called Le Keye opposite Romeland in St Albans and in 40 acres of land, 32 of pasture and 10 of woodland in the towns and parishes of Tytenhanger, Burstowe and Park in the county of Hertford’. Peter Pemberton was of Eltham in Kent and was perhaps a connection of Hugh Pemberton (Master, 1482). The feoffees in this transaction included John Materdale. No further information about this land has been found. Romeland was close to the Abbey and appears on modern maps.22

In 1492 and 1495, Jenyns was involved in transactions regarding premises in Westminster, including a messuage called The Antelope or The Hart on the Hoop. Other parties included Thomas Randall, tailor (and Master in 1493), Sir Richard Gylford and Simon Lynch of Cranbrook in Kent. But the nature of Jenyns’ involvement in this is unclear.

His role in a later transaction in Oxfordshire is straightforward. In 1517, Walter, Lord Ferrers of Chartley, pledged his manor of Chinnor to Jenyns as security for a £500 bond. In 1520, Ferrers sold the manor to Jenyns, who immediately sold it for £500 to his fellow staple merchant, Richard Fermor. As Ferrers had sold the manor without licence, he had to seek a pardon from Henry VIII, which was granted in April 1521. Jenyns name is not mentioned in the transaction, but the list of feoffees contains a large number of his regular associates, including John Kyrton, Christopher Rawson, John Nechells, William Barnes and John Reymes. Another is William Dauson, chaplain, his half-brother. Despite the apparent simplicity of these arrangements, the deeds must have contained other commitments; both Ferrers and Fermor received payments during the administration of Jenyns’ estate. In 1524, Nechells paid Fermor 20s for ‘diverse things’ that it was Jenyns duty to pay in relation to the manor. Much more significantly, in 1528, Nechells paid Fermor £22 ‘for diverse considerations of the trouble and charges that he hath had for the manor of Chynnor in Oxfordshire’; early in the following year, Lord Ferrers was paid £13 6s 8d for a debt in relation to a sale of wood. Nechells also paid John White of Chinnor 7s 8d, a ‘reward’ promised to him by Jenyns in relation to the purchase.23

19TNA CP40/999 r. 121, Easter 1512, AALT Image F0247 and the following image); VCH, Worcester, Vol 3, pp. 203-205, Rushock.

20Mander, Appendix 2, pp 347 – 350. The valuation of the Manor appears to be £14 at one point and £15 later.

21TNA E101/631/21 Payments for manor of Russhocke and Wolverhampton school; Mander, p 350. Later copy of the survey in Shaw-Hellier manuscripts in private collection (access via SRO)

22Ledward, KH, Close Rolls (Edward IV to Richard III) (London, 1954) No 1328, 24th December 1483 and 20th August 1484.

23Lobel, Mary D., Oxford: Vol 8, Parishes: Chinnor; Brewer, JS, Letters and Papers, Vol. 3, 1519-1523, p 478; LPL, Probate Accounts MS 1102 ff. 10, 25, 28, 13v

7 Benefactor

Stephen Jenyns lived in a pre-reformation catholic age and seems to have held traditional views. Great importance was attached to prayers for the souls of the departed. Many wills, having first bequeathed the soul to Almighty God and given instructions for burial, go on to arrange prayers and masses to be said for the testator’s soul. Next, gifts are given for good works to be done in his or her name. Only after these essential matters have been dealt with is mention made of family members. Many London wills also refer to the custom of dividing personal property (not land) into three equal parts, one part for the widow, one for the children and the third for the testator to bequeath as he or she wishes.

Jenyns had begun to make gifts long before he came to compose any will. In the year of his Mayoralty, he and his wife presented sumptuously illustrated books of Epistles and Gospels to the church of St Mary Aldermanbury with. The opening pages give musical notation for the intoning of the readings. The books survive in the British Library. On the opening page of each is a Latin inscription enjoining prayer for the good estate of Stephen and Margaret Jenyns while they live and for their souls when they have ‘migrated from the light’, and also for the soul of William Buk, who was buried in the Church.¹

12 BL Royal MS 2B XIII ff. 22v, 23r

Gospels for the Dedication of a Church (Luke 19, 1–10) and for St Andrew’s Day (Matthew 4, 18–22)

The reading for St Andrew reaches the middle of verse 21 on this page. © British Library Board, 2023. Used by permission.

An inventory of the possessions of the Merchant Taylors made in 1512 includes, in the chapel, nine pieces of arras (tapestry) ‘rychely made’ showing the life of St John (the tailors were the fraternity of St John the Baptist). Two of these had been paid for by the Company and one by Kateryn Pemberton. The three cloths ‘of the high doysse’ were given by Stephen Jenyns at a cost of over £100, and the final three were the gift of William Buk and cost £123. Also ‘the Right revered Dame Margaret, Wyfe of the forsaid Sir Stephen Jenyns, of hyr good mynde and zele that she bereth to this Company, hath gyffen a cloth of Saint John, richely browdered, sette upon blewe velvet with a white Rose over the hed of Saint John, the sydes of grene velvet, browdered with floure de luces of venyce gold, and with thise Wordes browdered in golde Entere tenere’.2

1British Library, Royal MS 2B XII and XIII. The order of words in the inscription is very slightly different in the two volumes.

2Clode, Memorials, Memorial XIII, Inventory of Effects, 1512. The meaning of ‘Entere’ in the Latin phrase is unknown.

Wolverhampton Grammar School

The gift of the Manor of Rushock to support the School he established in Wolverhampton has already been mentioned. The purchase price of the manor is not known, but it is said to be worth £14 or £15 per year. If the basis for purchase was the same as that used when he sold his lands in Kent to Bishop Fox a few years later, that is, 24 years purchase, it would approximate to £350.

John Colet, Dean of St Paul’s and founder of St Paul’s School (1509) also reformed and reorganised the Cathedral’s Jesus Guild (or The Fraternity of the Most Glorious Name of Jesus), of which Jenyns was an assistant from 1507 until the end of his life. Colet was Rector of the Guild. Colet came form a London merchant family and it is very likely that they new each other before the foundation of either School.3

Further light on relationships is shed by the manuscript concerning the Offley family which was published in 1903. The manuscript has little to say about Jenyns, but more about John Nechells and his world. Thomas Offley was apprenticed to Nechells; he was born in Stafford in about 1500 and is said to have been sent to London at the age of 12. John Nechells was ‘of great acquaintance with Mr William Lillie, who made the grammar now called Lyllie’s Grammar and was newly elected schoolmaster of Jesus schoole in Pauls churchyard of the foundation of that worthie Doctor Collett’. Lily was the first Master of St Paul’s School. Nechells sent his new apprentice to the School.

Jenyns and Nechells, then, knew Colet and Lily, who were themselves connected with Linacre and Thomas More. They were clearly moving in circles with interests in education as well as in trade. Nechells was also, it appears, Jenyns’ most trusted and successful apprentice and effective heir. Nechells may have had a greater influence on the foundation of the School than has been thought. The links between the foundations of the two Schools are clearly strong. Mander points out, however, that the similarity between Wolverhampton’s Elizabethan rules and those established by Colet for St Paul’s arises indirectly; the Merchant Taylors had adopted them for their own school.4

When the Taylors were required to produce their accounts for the School in court a century later, the document submitted had some entries for 1515 and then a gap until 1547. The manor of Rushock is mentioned again only in 1558. In 1547, the Merchant Taylors (under the mastership of Thomas Offley) paid 5s for the writing of a table in parchment for the ‘order of the Schole’; between 1551 and 1557, they paid £2 a year to increase the wages of the usher, usually sent to Wolverhampton by the hand of Thomas Offley. They did not handle the income from Rushock until 1558, when a dispute arose (probably as a result of a succession of deaths in the family of the tenants, the Newports). In 1515, the Company had granted the manor back to Sir Stephen rent free, for the lives of himself, his wife and John Nechells. It thus appears that Jenyns must have directly involved in the management of the School during the remainder of his life, receiving the income from Rushock and paying the salaries and expenses himself. In 1525, the manor was leased to Francis Newport for 99 years and he may have been required to send funds to the School without using the Taylors as an intermediary. But Jenyns’ probate accounts show that when the schoolmaster, Devey, died in 1526, the news was brought to London, either to Nechells in person or to the Merchant Taylors, and Thomas Devey of Oxford (possibly brother of the deceased master) travelled to London in the hope of securing the job for himself. Master Thomas Day of Cambridge was chosen instead. The payments made from Jenyns’ estate were such as would not be obligatory; it may be that Nechells was then accounting for the School separately as his own responsibility.5

3New, E A., Jesus Guild, pp 8 – 9; section no. 106

4Bower GC Offley Manuscript pp 1 – 3 for the details here. The article extends into the next volume. Ackroyd, Peter, Thomas More, pp 74 – 75 for Lily and his circle.

5TNA E101/631/21 Payments concerning the Manor of Rushock etc (1633); Mander p 303 and ‘additions and corrections (1925)’, found in some copies, for the reference to the 1525 lease. LPL, MS 1102, f. 16

The Jesus Guild

Jenyns’ membership of the Jesus Guild also gives an impression of his religious views. The Guild attracted the wealthy, so his reasons for joining may not have been entirely tied to his religious opinions. Members had a strong interest in liturgy. The Cathedral’s choristers were supplied with special gowns to wear for services and Guild ordinances specified exactly what clergy should wear. The music was of the highest standard and on occasion involved the choristers of the Chapel Royal as well as the Cathedral Choir. The members were generally conservative in religion. Jenyns features several times in the published Records. His name appears first in a list of assistants present at the making of an ordinance (since he was a knight, this must have been after 1508). In 1517, he travelled by boat to Fulham with other assistants, presumably to confer with the Bishop of London (the accounts at the same point note the gift to the Bishop of a ‘side and a cheyne’ of fresh salmon, for his good will in the purchasing of the Scala Coeli indulgence). The boat hire cost 2s 9d, which also covered drinking when they returned. Shortly after this, Jenyns was given a pike costing 2s (the Bishop’s salmon had cost 9s 4d). A more puzzling reference occurs In 1518; in a list of ‘necessary potations’, 8d was spent on a ‘drinking’ at the Horse’s Head on the viewing of Master Jenyns’ lands. First of all, this was very cheap compared with most of the ‘drinkings’ recorded, but it is not clear what land is referred to here, since no reference is made to land given by Jenyns to the Guild. But it is certainly possible that he had made or promised a gift. In 1527, there is a reference to ‘entering of Master Jenyns name’; the probate accounts show that £3 13s 8d was paid to the ‘clerk of Jesus in St Paul’s’ in 1528 as bede roll fees covering prayers for Jenyns at Paul’s Cross from his death until 1528. John Nechells may also have been a member of the Guild; he was one of the auditors of the accounts in 1526.6

Elsing's Spital

At the end of 1518, appropriately on St Stephen’s Day, Jenyns made a will ‘as to the disposicion only of my viii tenements or messuages with their appurtenances’ of which five were in the Old Change and three in Distaff Lane. He was then aged about 70, a great age for the times. His purpose was to provide extra support for Elsing’s Spital, or ‘the Hospital of St Mary within Cripplegate’ which was situated near London Wall, a short distance to the north of his house in Aldermanbury. The hospital had been founded in 1331 by William Elsing, a London mercer – a merchant, like Jenyns. It was to accommodate up to 100 people, preference being given to blind and paralysed priests. From 1340, management of the hospital was entrusted to a group of Austin Canons, governed by a prior. Elsing had endowed it with lands in several parishes, including St Mary Aldermanbury, and later bequests were made by other London citizens. The will arranges for the Prior of the Hospital to receive £4 11s 3d a year, in quarterly instalments, to augment the diet of ‘12 poor Bedewomen called Sisters founded within the hospital of the said Priory of Elsing Spital which 12 poor Bedewomen have daily out of the kitchen of the said Priory in flesh or in fish ready dressed in their dish to the value of iii d’. He is saying that the sisters, presumably as a result of an earlier endowment, were entitled to a dish of the value of 3d (between them); his new endowment adds a further 3d a day (the value of the bequest is 365 times 3d), so that they may now have a dish of the value of 6d. The sisters must have been a particular part of the establishment of the Hospital, possibly those mentioned to have had the care of the blind and sick who were provided with a house in the close of St Paul’s after the Hospital was dissolved in 1536.

The will is long and complex. The premises were actually given to William Bowry, Prior, and the Crossed Friars ‘near the Tower of London’. They and their successors were to keep the premises in good repair and rebuild when necessary. From the rents, they were to pay the quarterly gift to Elsing’s Spital. The Prior of the Hospital, John Wanell, and his successors were given power to take action against the Crossed Friars if they failed in their responsibilities.

13 Remains of Elsing's Spital as they stand today.

This gift came with religious obligations. The Crossed Friars were required to arrange for one of their brothers, who was a priest, to have in special remembrance during the daily mass for evermore the souls of Jenyns, Dame Margaret his wife, Margaret and Joan late his wives William Jenyns & Helen his wife, Jenyns’ father and mother, William Buk late husband of Dame Margaret & their children’s souls and the souls of eight members of the Hadds family (from whom the premises had been purchased). They were also to keep a solemn obit (a service on the anniversary of his death) in their Church with a dirige by note and a requiem mass. Jenyns also states that he had lately ordained a daily mass to be said in the Church of Elsing’s Spital for the same souls (which must have had a separate endowment, all record of which is lost) and that the Bedeswomen were to say the Paternoster and Ave Maria five times each and the creed once at that mass every day. Those who could were also to say the psalm of De Profundis (Psalm 130). Finally, they were to attend the dirige and mass of requiem which he has arranged to be said in the Hospital church on the anniversary of his death.7

St Andrew Undershaft

Stow says:

‘Steven Gennings Merchant Taylor sometime Mayor of London caused at his charges to bee builded the whole North Side of the Great Middle Aisle of St Andrew Undershaft, both of the body and quier as appeareth by his arms over every pillar graven and also the North Ile which hee roofed with timber and seeled, also the whole south side of the Church was glased and the pewes in the south chapel made of his costes as appeareth in every window and upon the said pews.”8

These works are said to have been started in 1520 and completed about 1532, giving the impression that Jenyns started them in his lifetime. The probate accounts suggest that the real story may be different. Much of the glazing and roofing mentioned by Stow was very clearly paid for by Nechells from Jenyns’ estate between 1525 and 1530. Besides specific items, he also made a quarterly payment towards building costs. £27 2s 5d was paid for a tenor bell early in 1526 and £3 6s 8d for ‘a pair of organs’ in 1528. In all, over £200 from the estate was paid towards work at St Andrew’s. It is not clear whether Jenyns had begun to contribute to this work before he died, but it is likely that Nechells was following his wishes in doing so.9

There is a full description of the glass in St Andrew’s, as it was in 1929, in the Inventory of Historical Monuments in London. During the Second World War, some of the heraldic glass relating to Jenyns was removed to his School, where it remains. Jenyns arms, either on their own or combined with those of his third wife, appeared six times in the listing of 1929, together with a representation of his Merchant’s Mark, which he used on seals (including that on the Elsing’s Spital will). The arms of John Nechells also appeared, and those of Nicholas Leveson, of the Wolverhampton family, who lived in the parish and is buried in the Church. Goldwell impaling Watton also featured.10

14 St Andrew Undershaft, St Mary Axe

15

7TNA LR 15/5 is the will. Page, W (Ed.) A History of the County of London: Vol. 1 , Crossed Friars (pp 514 – 516) and Elsing’s Hospital (St Mary within Cripplegate) (pp 535 – 537)

8Stow, John Survey of London, Ealdgate warde, pp 138 - 150

9LPL, Probate Accounts, MS 1102, ff. 14, 22v, 23v, 24, 24v; Asquith, Richard, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Piety and Trust: Testators and Executors in Pre-Reformation London, 159 - 162

10Historical Monuments, Vol 4 ‘Plate 15: Painted Glass, 15th-17th-Century' and ‘Aldgate Ward’, p. 15 and pp 4 – 13

Windows from St Andrew's at WGS

St Andrew Undershaft was the parish in which John and Katherine Nechells settled in 1509 and Stow indicates that John was buried here when he died in 1530. Certainly Thomas and Joan Offley are here, their grave marked with an impressive monument. The Offley document says that John Nechells married Margaret Offley ‘shortly after’ the death of his first wife Katherine. It is difficult to know how much faith to place in this statement, but as Thomas was born about 1500 and his sister is thought to have been younger than him, she cannot have married Nechells much before 1520. It is almost certain that Katherine died before her father and that she was buried in St Andrew’s. It is likely, therefore, that Jenyns either built or planned to build here because his daughter was buried here, and probable that Nechells contributed from his own funds as well as from the estate.11

The Death of Dame Margaret Jenyns

Dame Margaret Jenyns lived until 1521. An account of her death and funeral is given by Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King of Arms, who was present at the funeral.

In this version, the spelling has been modernised for clarity:

In the year of our Lord 152012 on the 15th day of March and the 12th year of our sovereign lord King Henry the 8th about 2 of the clock after midnight (being Friday) died Dame Margaret Jenyns wife to Sir Stephen Jenyns Knight sometime Mayor of the City of London. Which Dame Margaret went to bed in good health and after her first slept such humours arise on her that not withstanding any help that she might have it stopped her breath. For whose burying it was ordained in manner following.

First the body was aired and after brought into a fair large chamber in the house of the said Sir Stephen in Aldermanbury and 4 tapers continually burning. There is near to the said Chamber a chapel where there was daily diverse masses said during the time that the body remained there which chamber was hanged with black garnished with her arms. There was always certain persons both day and night attending & watching the body and on the Sunday following the body was conveyed to the hall which was also hanged with black garnished with scutcheons of her arms where was sett an altar. After, nobly accompanied, conveyed to the church Saint Mary Aldermanbury the courts, a part of the street, the Church and chapels hanged with black cloths garnished with the arms of her marriages the suffragan of London did the divine service having all manner of ceremonies as sermon, 3 solemn masses, hearse, dole etc Rougecroix pursuivant bore the King’s coat, Garter King of Arms being present & ordering the said interment which was as honourable and sumptuous as well in liveries, wax, alms and victuals as of any bachelor knights wife had been since a good while before. On whose soul God have mercy. The charges of her interment amounted to 300 marks & above.13

It was most unusual for married women to leave wills, since their property belonged to their husbands. But there is evidence that Margaret Jenyns did make one, with her husbands agreement. The Probate Act Book of the Commissary Court of London contains several references to a will, the executors being her brother, John Kyrton, brother in law, Henry Tyngelden and daughter, Agnes Rawson. There was a suggestion of a second will, in the possession of John Nechells, but when it was presented to the court, it was found to be invalid and the original executors were reinstated. There then appears to have been a dispute about whether the will had been correctly witnessed and it seems not to have been proved or regsitered. The existence of the will suggests that Jenyns recognised that his third wife was a wealthy woman in her own right and had her own family obligations to fulfil.14

11Bowers, Offley Manuscript p 3

12In modern reckoning, this is 1521, as is confirmed by the given regnal year of Henry VIII. The new year began on 25th March.

13BL, Additional Ms 45131, Wriothesley Heraldic Collections Vol 1, f. 87v

14LMA DL/C/B/001/MS09168/007 (microfilm copy) ff 29r, 34r – v, 36v, 37v, 38v, 40r, 41v; ref. from Christian Steer, Order of St Francis, p. 186

16 Account of the Funeral of Margaret Jenyns. Wriothesley Heraldic Collections, Vol. 1, BL Add MS 45131 f. 87v © British Library Board, 2023. Used by permission.

Stephen Jenyns’ Wills

One will of Jenyns has already been discussed. He made at least two more. The second does not survive, but is referred to in the will of John Benett, Merchant Taylor. It was dated 30th June 1522, in the last year of his life. His property next to the church of All Hallows the Great in Thames Street was bequeathed by Jenyns to his executors to be used ‘as he had shewed unto theime his intente and mynd in that behalf’. This property and also three tenements in Colman Street and a garden, once the property of Thomas Michell, ironmonger, which must correspond in whole or in part to premises bought from Michell by Jenyns’ estate for £140 were given by Benett to the Merchant Taylors. They were required to keep the premises in good repair and to provide a priest who was a brother of the Greyfriars to say mass at the altar of St Francis in the their church, where Jenyns was buried, between the hours of 6 and 9 in the morning daily for evermore. The Warden of the Greyfriars was to be paid for this and also for an obit held on the sixth day of May each year and for eight friars to say the psalm of De Profundis daily at Sir Stephen’s tomb. Payments amounting to £1 7s were to be made to representatives of the City and of the Merchant Taylors for their attendance at the obit and the prior of Elsing Spital was to be paid 6s 8d a year to ensure that everything was done correctly. The probate accounts show that the specified payments were made from Jenyns’ estate until 1527, after which this will came into effect.15

Stephen Jenyns’ made his final will as regards his moveable property on 29th January 1522. The funeral and related bequests made seem simpler than was then usual, concentrating, as they do, on the funeral and the period immediately following, but Jenyns had found other ways of establishing long term commemorations and did not need to mention them. The residue is bequeathed to his executors ‘to doo and dispose the same in goode dedes and workes of pitie and charitie to the pleasure of God for the helth and comforte of my soule, my said wifes soules our frendes soules and all xpen (Christian) soules by their goode discrecions as effectuously as they wolde I shulde doo for theym’. The probate accounts record payment of the bequests and the use made of the residue.

The value of Jenyns estate is given in his probate accounts as £2373 9s 2½d. One of the appraisers was William Bulstrode, the customs official who had taken an action against Jenyns in Chancery twenty years before. This is more than £1000 less than the valuation given in the almost contemporary taxation list. It is not possible now to understand the reasons for this discrepancy, though the taxation assessment was certainly not based on a detailed valuation. Perhaps Jenyns had made substantial gifts in the last year of his life, or large debts were identified during the appraisal process.

The total value of Jenyns’ bequests cannot be determined exactly from the will, because some are made to an unspecified number of people (for example, Jenyns’ servants). The accounts, however, give full details, listing the servants receiving bequests and giving a valuation to items of plate and clothing mentioned in the will. The total value of the bequests was a little over £566, of which nearly £233 went to members of his family and £60 to his executors (who were family members) and overseer. His servants (a term which here includes apprentices and others who worked in his business, his chaplain and his household servants) received £135. It is notable that, though all the household servants were given 40s in the will, four of the female servants were given an extra £5, in accordance with wishes expressed in his lifetime. Two standing cups worth £30 were given to the Merchant Taylors and £10 was assigned to the repair of roads. It can be hard to distinguish sums paid for religious services and those paid for the relief of poverty, since most gifts carried an expectation of prayer for Jenyns’ soul, but in approximate terms, £44 was paid to a wide range of religious bodies for services and prayers and £54 to those described as poor, sick, or as prisoners.

The only bequest mentioned in the will which does not occur in the accounts was the £40 given to the Mayor and commons of London to recover the patronage of the House of Bethlehem without Bishopsgate. The gift was conditional on the patronage being recovered within three years so it must be assumed that this did not happen.

The first mention of an apparent family member is very simple: ‘I bequeath to Symond Jenyns £20’. No relationship is stated, but being the first mentioned he was probably the nearest male heir, perhaps a nephew or (bearing in mind Jenyns’ age) a great nephew. In the accounts, he is described as a ‘cousin’, which has no definite meaning.

Next comes John Nechells, his son in law, who received several items of silver, including ‘six bowls and their cover of silver gilt with columbines in the bottoms’. Next came his ‘cousins’, Joan the daughter of John Nechells and ‘Margaret Stalworth, daughter of my daughter Elizabeth’. The second reference makes it quite clear that ‘cousin’ is in this instance a substitute for granddaughter, a term which was very rarely used in wills at this time. Elizabeth was mentioned because she was still living; Joan was described as the daughter of John because her mother had died. Each received 100 marks (£66 13s 4d) in cash and a standing cup with a cover, to be given to them when they reached 21 or married.

Black cloth to make a gown and hood and 40s in money was given to William Dauson, priest, (who witnessed the will) and black cloth for a cope and 20s in money to Friar Robert Dauson. The accounts refer to these men as half-brothers to Jenyns, showing that they were sons of Ellen Lane by her second marriage to John Dauson. £8 6s 8d is given to various uses in the Church of St Nicholas in Calais.

Jenyns’ executors were John Nechells and John Kyrton; his overseer was John Baker.16

15Benett’s will is given in full in Mander. Appendix 4, pp 357 – 363; LPL, Probate Accounts, MS 1102, f. 9r, 13r, 15r, 18r, 27v 16TNA PROB 11/21/141, given in full in Mander, App. 4, pp 353 – 357. This is a register copy, not the version written for Jenyns; some transcription errors are likely. John Nechells appears twice as Michell, and Thomas Mychell, ironmonger, a witness, is recorded as Nychell. Bequests listed in LPL, MS 1102, ff. 4v–7r. Valuation f. iii v.

The probate accounts show that the executors spent a total of just over £645 on the funeral and month’s mind. More than half of this (about £390) was spent on cloth, both in hangings and in black gowns distributed amongst the mourners. A fur ther £110 was spent on food and drink for the mourners at the funeral and at the month’s mind. The cost of proving the will and arranging the appraisal of Jenyns’ goods was nearly £47. The total of the bequests, funeral and testamentary expenses was £1258 9s 3d. This left a residue of almost exactly £1115, the distribution of which is discussed in the next section.17

Having made these two last wills, Jenyns died on 6th May 1523. He was buried in the church of the Grey Friars ‘under the tombe that I have there prepared’ in the chapel of St Francis. He was the first Alderman to request burial there since 1384, and had arranged for his tomb to be placed at the entrance to the chapel of St Francis, ensuring that the Mayor and Aldermen would pass it when they processed to the chapel on St Francis’ Day each year. Alderman Browne was paid £24 for ‘makyng of serten banners & pendentes and for Master Jenyns helmet’ and other items for the funeral. Lancaster Herald was paid for his part in the arrangements. The Bishop of St David’s, Richard Rawlins (once Rector of St Martin’s, Ludgate) said the final mass. The chief mourner was Laurence Aylmer, Jenyns’ immediate predecessor as Mayor. Garter King of Arms supervised the proceedings as mourners in black gowns and the Merchant Taylors in their livery processed. A drawing of the monument by Garter King of Arms survives.18

17Funeral expenses, LPL, MS 1102, ff. 1r – 3v; Testamentary expenses, f. 4r; Summary, f. 32v 18Steer, Christian, The Order of St Francis in Medieval London: Urban Benefactors and Their Tombs, in Powell, Susan (Ed.) Harlaxton Medieval Studies XXVII (2015), pp 183 – 189. Plate 1 for position of the tomb. Expenses from Probate Accounts, LPL MS 1102, ff 2v, 3v; additional detail from Asquith, Richard PhD Thesis, pp 75-77

17 Tomb of Sir Stephen Jenyns, drawn By Sir Thomas Wriothesley. Wriothesley Heraldic Collections, Vol. 1, BL ADD MS 45131 f. 86r. © British Library Board, 2023. Used by permission.

8 Family and Legacy

Stephen Jenyns had attempted to ensure through his wills and endowments that his name would be remembered and that his soul would be surrounded by prayer in its onward journey.

The Crossed Friars in their convent near the Tower of London were to maintain a priest for daily prayer and observe an annual obit. The Prior and Canons of Elsing Spital were to do the same, with the twelve bedeswomen praying for him daily in addition to the other arrangements. By Benett’s will, the Merchant Taylors were to establish a priest to say a mass for him each day in Greyfriars where, again, an annual obit would be held. There is also reference to money given to the Merchant Taylors for an obit in St Martin Outwich, although the documentation behind this is lost. These are the arrangements which are known. There may have been other wills with bequests to other religious houses on similar terms. The logic of supporting these arrangements with income from property (as with the School) was to ensure that the prayers continued ‘for evermore’.

However, change was on the way and none of the obits and daily prayers he established would last for long. Elsing’s Spital was dissolved in 1536 and both Greyfriars and the Crossed Friars surrendered on 12th November 1538. The Merchant Taylors’ accounts mention money owed to the King in respect of several obits including Jenyns’ in 1546. Most of the prayers he established had therefore ended within 16 years of his death; the Taylors’ obit may have continued a little longer. ‘Evermore’ was much shorter than he expected. Once services were no longer read in Latin, the books of Epistles and Gospels Jenyns and his wife had given to St Mary Aldermanbury would also have fallen out of use.1

Even in the short time during which his arrangements were in force, difficulties arose. In about 1530, a dispute arose in Chancery between the priors of Elsing’s Spital and the Crossed Friars. The Hospital complained that the Friars were not maintaining the property in accordance with the terms of the will and therefore entered into the premises themselves, an action to which the Friars objected.2

The work he initiated in St Andrew Undershaft survived. The majority of the London Jenyns knew and the churches and properties connected with him were destroyed in 1666. But the Fire did not reach St Andrew’s and parts of the building which survive today, after many changes, were built in his time or just afterwards. The heraldic glass remaining in the north aisle of the Church was destroyed in the bombing of the Baltic Exchange in 1992. During restoration, glass stored during the Second World War was discovered by the repairers; a representation of Jenyns’ arms now appears high in one of the north windows. The heraldic glass sent to Wolverhampton during the War remains in Big School.3

The School he founded in Wolverhampton also survives to remember him.

Family

Leaving aside the insubstantial figure of Anne Jenyns, who features only in the will of John Materdale, Stephen’s daughters were Katherine and Elizabeth. Katherine is always mentioned first and, with her husband, was the principal beneficiary of Stephen’s estate. She seems likely to have been the older, but it is also possible that Stephen had greater confidence in her and her husband than in Elizabeth.

The inscription on Thomas Offley’s tomb says that he was married to Joan Nechells for 52 years. Joan died in 1578, so the marriage must have taken place about 1526. The Materdale wills show that John Nechells had married Katherine Jenyns between 1498 and 1506; Nechells appears in property transactions with Jenyns in 1504, as does Elizabeth’s husband, William Stalworth. It seems likely that both marriages took place in the first three or four years of the sixteenth century.4

1Page, W (Ed.) A History of the County of London: Vol. 1, p 507 for Greyfriars, p 516 for Crossed Friars and pp 536 – 537 for Elsing’s Spital; Clode, CM, Early History, Part 1, p 143

2TNA C1/622/41 & 42, William Crochyn vs John Wanell, bill and answer. 3St Helen’s Bishopsgate, St Andrew Undershaft: A Short Guide 4Mander, G. P., History, pp 20 – 21 for the inscription; CCC, H1 Cap. 12 Ev. 58 (27th September 1504) for John Nechells in a property transaction with Jenyns – he is already a Citizen and Taylor at this time.

John Nechells was the son of Richard Nechells of Wolverhampton; in 1515 his attorneys appeared in the Dean’s Manor Court to claim Richard’s property there. A Richard Nechells, perhaps the father, occurs in a case of 1477, when he is described as a baker. The Nechells family were based in the area now called Neachells, but it is not known where the lands claimed by John in 1515 were situated. John had at least one brother, Thomas; in 1523, as executor, John pursued a debt due to Thomas from a yeoman of Worfield. Thomas Nechells was buried at St Peter’s Church in 1522, one of the earliest known burials there. A William Offley, possibly a brother of Thomas, is mentioned in the same record.5

In the surviving customs records, he is first found exporting cloth in 1503 and appeared as a Merchant of the Staple in 1507/08, when he exported just over 54 sacks of wool and nearly 6500 wool fells. Thus his commercial activities increased significantly at about the time he married Katherine Jenyns. He then appears in all the surviving customs accounts for wool until his death. He makes some appearances in the records of imports, paying tax on a last of herrings in 1514 and a quantity of wine in 1520. His brother Thomas also ventured into the wool trade between 1512 and 1518, exporting a total of nearly 22 sacks in the 3 years for which figures are available.6

Katherine Nechells certainly died before her husband. There is no evidence of children other than Joan, so she may have died as a young mother, but if John’s second marriage took place shortly after her death, she must have lived into middle age. When John did remarry, it was to Margaret Offley, the sister of Thomas (who married John’s daughter at about the same time). She was much younger than John and outlived him by more than 40 years.

5CRO, DCR 35/9/25 and 26 for the Dean’s Court. TNA CP40/861 (Hilary 1477), AALT Image F0522 for the case mentioning Richard Nicheles; TNA CP40/1038 (Hilary 1523), AALT Images D1049 for the case involving John as executor. Burials from Huntbach’s Obituary in The Wolverhampton Antiquary, Vol 1, No 5, 1919, p. 149

6Jenks, Stuart, LCA, Vol 74, part iv, Nos 5 – 15. The volumes are indexed by surname etc

Nechells as Jenyns' Executor

The residue of Jenyns’ estate amounted to £1115. The probate accounts give full details concerning the distribution of this sum over the seven years following Jenyns’ death. The last dated payment was made on 20th November 1530, less than a month before John Nechell’s death on 16th December. John Kyrton had predeceased him, his will being proved in February 1530. Nechells died intestate and his second wife, Margaret Offley, who later married Stephen Kyrton, was granted administration of his goods and also of the property of Stephen Jenyns left unadministered by her husband. She was still pursuing debts in the Common Pleas two years later.7

The probate accounts have been studied in detail by Dr Richard Asquith. The most notable feature is that John Nechells distributed over £536 more than the appraised value of the estate, suggesting either that it was undervalued or that some of the charitable gifts should be attributed to Nechells himself. Although all payments are listed under the heading of ‘charity’, some correspond to debts or obligations arising in Jenyns’ lifetime. It has been noted that £328, corresponding to income from the sale of the Kent lands, was given to John Nechells and two of John Kyrton’s daughters. In total, approximately £625 was assigned either to members of the extended family in accordance with arrangements made by Jenyns (or with agreements made in court, see below) or to debts owed by Jenyns at his death (including household payments for the period immediately afterwards).

The remaining £1025 can be thought of as split between direct payments for religious purposes, secular projects and individual charity. It is difficult to assign all payments precisely to one of these categories, so these figures are approximate. £693 was used for religious purposes, of which 53% (£367) was spent on church building works, mainly on St Andrew Undershaft and on John Kyrton’s Church at Edmonton. 36% (£250) was spent on the annual obit and arrangements for regular masses and prayers. The remainder was used to pay preachers, for vestments and other small items and for food given to religious houses.

The majority of the £154 spent on secular projects is accounted for by a gift of £133 to the City of London for the purchase of salt. The remainder was for building projects in Wolverhampton (discussed below), Hackney and elsewhere.

Some of the £178 distributed to individuals is clearly for the relief of poverty. In other cases, reasons are more obscure. £17 was given towards marriages and £19 to scholars at Oxford and Cambridge, usually ‘towards his exhibition’. Jenyns’ own relations also benefited from his charitable giving, notably his half-brother Friar Robert Dauson and his nephew, Nicholas Jenyns.

Gifts for works in Wolverhampton are of particular interest. £5 was given for the paving of the market place, which measured 30 yards by 40 yards; the paving was expected to cost 1d per square yard. A further £6 13s 4d was paid for the making of a ‘washing well’ of freestone and £5 was given towards making the high altar in St Peter’s Church. £1 went to the repair of highways. Vestments were given to the Church, to Piper’s Chapel and to the Hermitage Chapel at the west end of the town (from which Chapel Ash probably gets its name). Payments in relation to the School have been mentioned elsewhere.

The Probate Accounts give ample evidence of the care John Nechells took in distributing Jenyns’ estate and show him as a conscientious and able administrator. This should be remembered when the court actions in the next section are examined.8

Elizabeth Stalworth: Testamentary Disputes

Elizabeth Jenyns also married a man who worked for her father, William Stalworth. He may have been an apprentice (he refers to Stephen as ‘my master’ in his will). William was the son of a tailor, Walter Stalworth (possibly Master in 1484). William and Elizabeth had at least two daughters, Margaret and Gertrude. In his will, he asks to be buried in the cloister of the Friars Preachers (Blackfriars) in London ‘as nigh to the place where my children lie buried as conveniently may be’, so there must have been other children who died in infancy. There is no evidence of William engaging in trade overseas; the will suggests a greater emphasis on clothing than on wool and cloth. He gave a cope to his parish church of St Martin, Ludgate. Other bequests include a pall to the church of St Paul’s Cray, Kent, vestments to the blessed rood of Rokesley and the church of St Mary Cray, also in Kent and money for copes to the priors of the Blackfriars in both London and Oxford. He also refers to a stock of his cloth in the possession of his former servant Valentine Clerk, who is forgiven part of what he owes for it.

Elizabeth was a widow when her father died, but remarried shortly afterwards. Her second husband was Charles Whyte, later Barber Surgeon. William Stalworth’s will mentioned a Charles Whyte as his servant and gave him five marks. Charles White, tailor, supplied black cloth for Jenyns’ funeral. It seems likely that the tailor is the same person, though how he transferred to the Company of Barber Surgeons is not clear.

7TNA PROB 11/23/246, Will of John Kyrton (though written Kyrketon throughout). For Nechells’ intestacy, TNA CP40/1076, via AALT Image F4506 8The whole of LPL MS 1102 is relevant to this section. Wolverhampton bequests on ff 26r – 26v. Asquith, Richard, Unpublished PhD thesis, Royal Holloway (2022)

Elizabeth clearly felt she had not received a fair share of her father’s property. She pursued an action against the executors in the courts of the City of London, whose records do not survive. Failing to receive what she considered a fair hearing there, she appealed to the Court of Star Chamber. The claims she made there can be recounted.

She says that she is the daughter of Sir Stephen Jenyngs knight and alderman and that in order to secure a ‘reasonable part and portion of the said Elizabeth of the goods of her said father to her of right belonging’ she had, with her husband, exhibited a bill of complaint against John Nechells and others before Sir John Aleyn, late mayor (1525). She describes herself as the only daughter and orphan of Sir Stephen and bases her claim on what is often referred to in wills as the ‘old and laudable custom’ of the City that testators should divide their property into three equal parts, one for the wife, one to be divided between any children who had not already received their share, and one to be disposed of as the testator wished. She says that her father was worth £10,000 when he died and that she had not received any share in her father’s lifetime, so she was entitled to half of this sum. She also says that there was an act of Common Council, over and above the old custom, which entitled her to this. John Nechells, John Kyrton, William Smith, Nicholas Rutland and others ‘by cloaked, subtle and crafty means’ have defrauded her of her reasonable part and portion. She also claims that her father, being of a great age and ‘without any wisdom, knowledge or distinction but always persuaded ordered and led by the said Nechells’, had made his will when he ‘had no more distinction, wit or knowledge than a child of three years of age’. Besides the will, she refers to an ‘instrument’ designed to hide their ‘disgraceful dealing’.

The action in London had been started in the Mayoralty of John Alleyn (1525/26) but by the time of the appeal to Star Chamber he is referred to as the late Mayor, so this case probably dates from late 1526 or 1527. Part of Elizabeth’s case was that the act she was relying on was ‘doubtful, dark and obscure’ and that ‘many of the said aldermen were ignorant and not expert having little knowledge or understanding of the said act’. Another objection was that the Recorder of London, responsible for expounding the law to the Court, was John Baker, who happened to be the supervisor of Stephen Jenyns’ will and, in Elizabeth’s mind, in league with John Nechells. She therefore proposed that Sir Richard Broke, Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer, who had been Recorder when the act was passed, should sit with the Court when they heard the case. Nechells refused to accept the arbitration of Broke and Alleyn acting together, on the grounds that the jurisdiction belonged to the Mayor’s Court alone. Elizabeth sad that she would not receive justice in London, both because of Baker’s role in the decisions of the court and because John Nechells was ‘well friended and conversant with the mayor and aldermen as other substantial merchants of the said city’.

Nechells’ answer simply says that this was a matter for the City courts and not within the purview of Star Chamber. He did not enter into any discussion of the inheritance. What Charles and Elizabeth White did not mention was that she had previously been married and had inherited a life interest in two properties, one in Westminster and one in Brentford. Stephen Jenyns probably felt that he had advanced her in life by that marriage. The probate accounts make the outcome clear: an agreement was made in March 1529 between Nechells and White, by the arbitration of John Baker and Roger Chamley (Cholmeley), under which the Whites received £100 in money, plate and goods. Cholmeley was to be John Baker’s successor as Recorder of London, so it is clear that Elizabeth’s attempt to have the matter determined outside the City was unsuccessful. As to her description of Jenyns’ state of health towards the end of her life, it is hard to judge. He remained in office as an Alderman.10

This was not the only legal action concerning Jenyns’ estate. William Stalworth had left 40 marks each to his daughters Margaret and Gertrude and his executors had entered into a bond before the then Mayor, promising that Elizabeth Stalworth would pay her daughters that sum when they came of age or married. Margaret had married William Smith and they had received her 40 marks. But Gertrude subsequently died and, by the terms of their father’s will, Margaret became entitled to her share. It seems that William and Margaret had been unsuccessful in obtaining this from Elizabeth and had also pursued John Nechells and, after his death, his widow Margaret, as administratrix. Nechells had been a supervisor of William Stalworth’s will, but these actions may also have been concerned with extracting money from Stephen Jenyns’ estate. Margaret Nechells had married Stephen Kirton, so the chancery action survives as Kyrton v. Smyth. The Kirtons say that on 9th December 1533 (more than ten years after Jenyns’ death) the parties had bound themselves to accept the Chancellor’s judgement as regards all matters between them, including the estates and legacies of Stephen Jenyns and John Nechells as well as William Stalworth, and that on 7th December 1534, William Smith, now a widower, had, by his deed, renounced all further claims in relation to his late wife’s interest in any of these estates. This case, which is dated between 1534 and 1538, arose because (according to the Kirtons) William Smith had realised that the decrees made by the court did not mention Gertrude and he was now trying to extract her money from them.11

9TNA PROB 11/19/306 Will of William Stalworth, 1519. Although Walter Stalworth does not appear in the list of Masters, he is referred to as ‘Master Stalworth’ in a minute of 14th April 1486 (Davis, M, Minutes, p50)

10TNA STAC 2/27/85 for the bill and answer in this case. The English of the quotations has been modernised. LPL, Probate Accounts, MS 1102, f.30r for the arbitration

11TNA C1/834/54, Kyrton v. Smyth (bill only). Parts of this are damaged.

It is clear from the probate accounts that the William Smith who married Margaret Stalworth was the servant of this name given £20 in Stephen Jenyns’ will. He is probably also the Merchant Taylor and Merchant of the Staple active from 1520 onwards. He (or another William Smith) is named by Thomas Michell as a ‘cousin’ and overseer of his will. He exported woolfells through London in all but one of the years for which records survive between 1520/21 and 1526/27 and a quantity of wool in the last of those years. There is a later mention that he lost 1200 woolfells at sea in 1528. In 1524 he appeared jointly with John Nechells, pursuing William, Prior of St Andrew in Northampton for a debt of £100. In 1526, he was involved with John Kirton, John Nechells, John Baker and others in a case concerning land at Meopham in Kent.12

After this, he ran into difficulty himself. In the Hilary Term of 1531, he was pursued for a debt of £350 by Richard Raynold, mercer, and for a debt of 200 marks by Antony de Vivaldi, merchant of Genoa. It is the first of these cases which identifies him as a Merchant Taylor as well as a stapler. He had probably died by 1544.13

Of William and Elizabeth Stalworth’s children, only Margaret lived to marry and have children of her own. She herself died while the legal actions mentioned were in progress, but two transactions recorded in the feet of fines for Middlesex show that she was survived by at least one child. William Stalworth had given Elizabeth a life interest in two properties. A ‘tenement in King Street in the parish of St Margaret, Westminster’ had been bought by William’s father. He had bought for himself ‘lands and tenements at East Braynford’. The Westminster property was to go to Gertrude after Elizabeth’s death and the Brentford property to Margaret, but Gertrude having died unmarried, both properties were destined for Margaret and her descendants. In the autumn of 1544, Charles White, barber surgeon, Elizabeth his wife and John Smith, the son and heir of William Smith and Margaret his wife, sold eighteen acres of land at ‘Old Braynford and Illyng’ to John Lamb. In the summer of 1546, John Smith sold a messuage and garden in Westminster to Stephen Claybroke, mentioning the life interest of Elizabeth White.14

Margaret may have had a second child. Charles White, in his will of 1544, leaves his ‘lands at Lyttleton’ to Elizabeth Smith, after the death of Elizabeth his wife. He does not identify the county in which Littleton lies. The most likely possibility here is that Elizabeth Smith was his wife’s granddaughter and John’s sister. Unfortunately, the sale of the only lands known to be associated with John Smith by 1546 and the absence of any indication that he had been apprenticed to a particular trade, makes tracing him almost impossible.15

Charles White appears to have been a Staffordshire man. He and Elizabeth were involved in a dispute in Chancery concerning some land in Uttoxeter which he had inherited through his mother and in 1534 sold a messuage in Uttoxeter and Crakemarsh. In the 1541 Subsidy, he was assessed at £40 in the parish of St Martin , Ludgate. He was Warden of the Barber Surgeons’ Company in 1535 and 1542. In his will he mentions a number of handwritten books of surgery, one of which survives in the British Library. Elizabeth was still living to prove her second husband’s will in February 1545, but then disappears from view.16

Simon Jenyns

Symond, or Simon, Jenyns, mentioned in the will and described as a cousin of Sir Stephen in the accounts, is an elusive figure, but something of his life is known. He exported through the port of London as a Merchant of the Staple in his own right between 1516 and 1518 and again in the four years for which information is available between 1522 and 1527. The quantities were small in relation to Stephen Jenyns and John Nechells; a little under 14 sacks altogether in the first period and 51 sacks in the second. His first shipment in the second period was on 15th April 1523, just three weeks before Stephen Jenyns died. He is also recorded importing two shipments of canvas, with a total value of £37 10s , in 1519/20. After 1527, he makes no appearance in the customs accounts up to 1540. In October 1532, he was named among the staple merchants in a list of lodgings appointed for the retinue of Francis I of France during his visit to Henry VIII at Calais. John Hill of the parish of St Andrew Undershaft, who made his will in 1533, refers to lands in Calais which are held to his use, under the terms of a deed made in August 1531, by a group of people including several merchants of the staple, one of whom is Simon Jenyns. It seems that Simon was resident in Calais and it is possible that he represented both Jenyns and Nechells there.17

Nicholas Jenyns

Nicholas is introduced in the probate accounts as the son of Master Jenyns’ brother and as a resident of Tenby in south Wales. The only brother of whom anything is known was John Jenyns. Nicholas may have been his son, or there may have been another. Simon, being described as a cousin in the same source, must be thought to have a different relationship to Jenyns. The accounts also state that Nicholas was given £7 6s 8d in 1527 ‘towards his comfort and charges for the keeping of his wife and many children’. Despite this large family, he made a pilgrimage to Walsingham that year, being pad from the estate for his own costs and for the use of a horse.18

12LPL MS 1102 ff 5v, 6r; Jenks, Stuart LCA, Vol 74, part iv, Nos 14, 15; TNA CP40/1042, Hilary 1524, AALT Image F0509; TNA CP40/1049, Hilary 1526, AALT Image D0063; Will of Thomas Michell, TNA PROB 11/22/308

13TNA CP40/1068, Hilary Term 1531, AALT Image D2361 and AALT Image D5422; see below for evidence re death by 1544

14TNA, CP 25/2/27/185/36HENVIIIMICH (Brentford lands) and CP 25/2/27/186/28HENVIIITRIN for Westminster

15TNA PROB 11/30/337 Will of Charles Whyte

16Wrottesley, G. Staffordshire Feet of Fines, 26 Henry VIII, No 3; Lang, RG, Subsidy Rolls: 1541 London Subsidy roll: Farringdon Ward Within', pp. 66-75;. Young, AT, Barber Surgeons, p 377; BL, Sloane MSS 776

17Gairdner, J, Letters and Papers, Vol. 5, pp. 589-599; TNA PROB 11/25/ 40, Will of John Hill

18LPL Probate Accounts MS 1102, ff. 8r, 13v, 19r, 20v

John Nechells

John Nechells’ continuing contribution to the wool trade through the staple has already been discussed. He is first recorded exporting cloth through London in December 1502 and is then found in all the extant Petty Customs accounts until 1514. The only remaining account in his lifetime is for two months in 1521, so it is quite likely that he was still exporting cloth. But the quantity was at a peak in 1502/03, when he exported 90 cloths of ‘sine grano’, taxed at just over £5 5s. This had fallen to 40 cloths by 1507/08 (when he made his first recorded wool exports) and to 17 cloths by 1513/14. Only two full years of tunnage and poundage accounts survive during his career from 1502 to 1530 and he features in both, though with smaller quantities than are imported by Stephen Jenyns. In 1513/14 he imported at least one last of herring, a quantity of iron plate, 500 ells of packing canvas, and varying quantities of Ghent, Brabant and Holland cloth, in addition to a piece of diaper. In 1519/20 he brought in 58 yards of damask, 200 ells of packing canvas and 2 tuns 3 hogsheads (693 gallons) of wine – small compared with the quantities imported by Jenyns in the previous century.19

John Nechells was Master of the Merchant Taylors in 1522/23. In July 1525, he was elected Alderman for Broad Street Ward, but pleaded infirmity and was discharged from office in the following January. He paid a fine of £200 for refusing to serve. In 1526, he was granted arms:20

18 Grant of Arms to John Nechells. Chester Record Office, DCR 38/8/11. © Chester Archives & Local Studies, 2023. Used by permission

The Offley manuscript gives an account of his character and of the circumstances of his death. ‘Mr John Nechells who mainteined dayly a plentifull table & releived most of the poore sort of his parish, a very religious and godly man detesting vice and embracing virtue; from his mouth ever to all men proceeded gentle and loving words’. Shortly before his death, ‘sitting in his chaire, hee called his servant Thomas Offley. And said to him sonn Thomas I pray thee take money & goe to the Mercers shopp, & buy mee a paire of Sattin sleeves; That shall be done Sir said Thomas, will you have any thing else, Nothing said Mr Nechells but the blessing of God goe and be with thee, but before hee returned with the Sattin, most quiettly in his chaire hee departed this life’.²1

19Jenks, Stuart, LCA, Vol 74 part iv Nos 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13 20Davies, M and A Saunders, History, p 270 (given as Nichols); Beaven, A.P., Aldermen, Broad Street Ward 21Bower, GC, Offley Manuscript, p 3

Thomas Offley and his Descendants

Thomas Offley, who had been his apprentice and then became his son-in-law, continued the business. John Nechell had sent him to St Paul’s School where he ‘became a good grammarian’ and ‘understood the Latin tongue perfectly’. Thomas is said to have had a ‘sweet voice’ and William Lily, who believed knowledge in music to be beneficial to all arts, sent him ‘to learn pricksong amongst the choristers of Paules’. Thomas probably married Joan Nechells in about 1526. The Offley manuscript explains that Thomas’ sister Margaret had come to London as a servant in John Nechells’ household and then became his second wife. It is not clear which of these marriages came first. After Nechells’ death, Margaret exported wool as a merchant of the staple in her own right in 1530/31; she then married Stephen Kyrton who had been Stephen Jenyns’ apprentice (as well as his wife’s nephew). She did not remarry after Kyrton’s death in 1553 and appears in a list of Merchants of the Staple following the loss of Calais, so may again have exported wool on her own account.22

There is not space here for a full examination of the long career of Thomas Offley. He became Master of the Merchant Taylors in 1547, served the city as Sheriff in 1553, as Alderman for Aldgate Ward for 32 years and as Mayor in 1556/57. As Sheriff at the time of the death of Edward VI, he countersigned the letters patent by which the King excluded Mary from the succession in favour of Lady Jane Grey (another signatory was John Withers, an apprentice of Jenyns). However, his role as Sheriff also required him to take Lord Guildford Dudley and other convicted prisoners to execution after Mary’s accession. As Mayor, he was knighted by Mary I at Greenwich, 7th February 1557. He held property at Calais which he lost when the city fell to the French. He continued to trade in wool, however, until the end of his life, serving as Mayor of the Staple of Westminster. He was also a founder member of the Muscovy Company, established in 1555; Offley was one of 24 assistants appointed by charter to help the Governor of the Company (Sebastian Cabot) to run its affairs. Trade with Russia was its principal activity.23

The Offley Manuscript describes Joan Offley (Nechells) as ‘civil, virtuous & learned, meek, merciful, just, sound and chaste’ and says that she would ‘write and cast accounts and receive and pay for all the provision and accounts bestowed in the house’, but that when she reached the age of about 40 she grew ‘weak and infirm in body and mind’. Despite this, she lived until 1578, when she must have been over 70, though not perhaps 80 as the manuscript suggests. It also reports that Sir Thomas had two sons with a lady known as Mrs Raymond, who were sent to university and became clergymen.

22Bower, GC, Offley Manuscript, p 3. To learn pricksong is to learn to sing from written music rather than by ear.

23Clode, C.M. Early History, Vol. 1, pp 119 – 120, 172 – 173 (not reliable for family relationships). Calendar of Patent Rolls, Philip and Mary, Vol 2 (London, 1935), 26th Feb 1555, 55 – 59

There is no direct evidence of this, but a Mrs Rayman ‘sometime my servant’ and a William Rayman, called his godson, are given black gowns in Offley’s will and a room in the inventory of his London house is called ‘Rayman’s chamber’.24

Sir Thomas purchased the Manor of Madeley in north Staffordshire and additional lands in Wolverhampton and Darlaston. The schoolmaster’s and usher’s salaries are often sent from London ‘by the hand of Sir Thomas Offley’, suggesting that on his journeys to Madeley, he would visit the School. His son, Henry, gave the School some adjacent land in 1605. Thomas died in August 1582 and was buried beside his wife in St Andrew Undershaft, where their tomb can still be seen. His inventory valued his estate at £3,305, once debts and funeral charges had been accounted for. In addition, he had in stock with the merchants of Muscovy, £242, and in Bruges, 23 pockets of wool of varying qualities, thought to be worth between £300 and £400.25

Wolverhampton Connections

There remains a question as to whether the Jenyns family retained any links to Wolverhampton apart from the School. In 1529, a certain Richard Jennyns, Grocer and citizen of London, left a will in which he bequeathed £5 to the repair of the body of the Church in Wolverhampton ‘where I was born’, and 40s to be distributed among poor householders in Wolverhampton. The money for the church was to be spent under the supervision of James Leveson. He mentions his father, William, who is living and receives £10, a brother, Robert, who is a draper, and cousins William and Margaret. Richard had been apprenticed to a Thomas Jenyns and received his freedom in 1519. He also has an apprentice, John Jenyns. In May 1523, a few days before Stephen Jenyns’ death, William Mershe of Wolverhampton made a feoffment of a messuage in Dudley Street to the use of this Richard Jenyns, though a year later it was transferred to James Leveson. In 1532, two families headed by a William Janens were living in Dudley Street and one of them mentions a son, Robert. This William must also be the father of Richard the grocer. They may have been descendants of an unknown brother of Stephen, but it is hard to be sure.26

24Bower, GC, Offley Manuscript, p 9; TNA PROB 11/64/449 (Will); TNA PROB 2/423 (Inventory)

25The ODNB article on Sir Thomas says that he lived at the end of his life in the parish of St Dionis Backchurch, but his will states that he is a parishioner of St Andrew’s, to which (and to no other) he leaves money for ‘tithes forgotten’. It seems reasonable to conclude that he continued to live in the house settled on his wife (as John Nechell’s heir) by the deed of 1509. He had a brother, Thomas junior, and at least one nephew of the same name. Inventory, TNA PROB 2/423. Lists of ‘doubtful’ and ‘desperate’ debts have not been included.

26TNA PROB 11/23/178 Will of Richard Jennyns, Grocer of London; GL, Grocers’ Company, CLC/L/GH/C/003/MS11592A/001; SRO

D593/B/1/26/6/31/3 – 5, Sutherland Papers, Deeds re premises in Dudley St, Wolverhampton, 1523 – 24; Kettle, AJ, List of Families, p 158

19 The Memorial to Thomas and Joan Offley, on the N side of the Chancel, St Andrew Undershaft

Amendments to the List of Headmasters of Wolverhampton Grammar School

Mander identified a master by the name of Devey, in office before 1550, and knew that Henry Raby was in office by 1569. He suggested that Devey might have been William Devey, MA (Oxford). The Probate Accounts tend to support this identification: when Wolverhampton’s Devey died, a Thomas Devey, of Oxford, travelled to London hoping to secure the post for himself. William Devey received his BA in 1510 and his MA in 1514; Thomas Devey, BA 1525, might easily have been a younger brother. He was not appointed. It is possible that William (if that is the correct identification) was the first Master.1

The Accounts then report the appointment of a Master Thomas Day, from the University of Cambridge. There are two further references to him. In 1527, he was paid for his costs in riding to Cambridge to provide a schoolmaster to teach the scholars in his absence because of his sickness. In May 1529, he was described as ‘sometime schoolmaster at Wolverhampton’ and was given a gift on the singing of his first mass.2

The name of the master preceding Raby and the date of his departure are made clear by two entries in the accounts of the Merchant Taylors which do not survive in the original but are to be found in an extract made for the courts in the 1600s:

‘Paid to John Eleershawe Schoolemaster of the Gramar Schoole founded by Sr Stephen Jenings Knt deceased in Woolverhampton by the hands of Sr Thomas Offley for his salary due for three quarters of a yeare ending at Our Lady Day 1560, £7 10s’

Item paid to Mr Henry Raby Mr. of Arts now newly elected and admitted into the roome of Schoolemr. of the Grammar Schoole in Woolverhampton for and towards his charges and expences as well in cominge upp to London from Southwell in the County of Nottingham and in going thither againe as alsoe for and towards his expences that hee shall be at in removinge from thence his family to Woolverhampton and according to a decree in that behalf made the 24th day of June Anno 1560 as by the Register of this house thereof made more plainly doth and may appeare the sum of £3 6s 8d.’ 3

The list now begins:

Table 6: Early Masters of Wolverhampton Grammar School.

Bibliography

Archive Sources

British Library (BL); Additional MSS, Royal MSS, Sloane MSS

Cheshire Record Office (CRO): Crewe Collection (DCR)

Corpus Christi College, Oxford (CCC): Twine Vols 25 & 26 and original documents (evidences)

Guildhall Library (GL): Records of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, Wardens’ Accounts Records of the Grocers’ Company

Lambeth Palace Library, Probate Accounts, online at: - Manuscripts (lambethpalacelibrary.org.uk)

London Metropolitan Archives (LMA): Records of the Court of Husting (CLA/023/PL and CLA/023/DW); Letter Books M and N (COL/AD/01)

The National Archives (TNA):

C1 – Early Chancery Pleadings

C146 and C147 – Ancient Deeds

CP25/2 Feet of Fines

CP40 – Common Pleas (see also under websites, AALT)

E40 – Ancient Deeds

E101 – Accounts Various

E122 – Customs Accounts

E179 – Exchequer, King’s Remembrancer – Taxation records

E326 – Ancient Deeds

LR – Land Revenue

PROB 2 – Prerogative Court of Canterbury Inventories

PROB 11 – PCC Wills

REQ – Court of Requests

SP46 – State Papers

STAC – Star Chamber

Shaw-Hellier Manuscripts (access via SRO)

Staffordshire Record Office (SRO): Sutherland Papers (D 593)

Wolverhampton Grammar School (WGS): Two deeds relating to Stephen Jenyns

Unpublished Sources

Asquith, Richard M Piety and Trust: Testators and Executors in Pre-Reformation London, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Royal Holloway, University of London (2022)

Printed Sources

Ackroyd, Peter The Life of Thomas More, Vintage (1999)

Baker, Sir John, The Men of Court, 1440 to 1550, Selden Society, Supplementary Series, Vol. 18 (2012)

Beaven, Alfred P, The Aldermen of the City of London Temp. Henry III - 1912 (London, 1908)

Bentley, Samuel Excerpta Historica (1831) (via Internet Archive)

Bower GC A Manuscript relating to the family of Offley in The Genealogist, Vol XIX, (1903)

Brewer, JS Letters & Papers, Foreign & Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. 1, 1509 – 1514, HMSO, London (1920)

Brewer, JS Letters & Papers, Foreign & Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. 3, 1519 – 1523, HMSO, London (1867)

Chew, Helena M (Ed.) Calendar of assize rolls: Roll FF, in London Possessory Assizes: A Calendar, London (1965) (consulted via British History Online)

Clode, CM, The Early History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, Part 1, (London, 1888)

Clode, CM, Memorials of the Guild of Merchant Taylors (London, 1875)

Davies, Matthew The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London: Court Minutes 1486 – 1493, Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 2000

Davies, Matthew and Anne Saunders, The History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, (London, 2004)

Elrington, C.R. (Ed.) A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 8 (London, 1968) (consulted via British History Online)

Foster, Joseph, Alumni Oxonienses

Fry, GS (Ed.) Abstracts of Inquisitiones Post Mortem For the City of London: Part 1 (London, 1896) (Accessed via British History Online)

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Hall, Edward, Hall’s Chronicle (1809) accessed via Internet Archive

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Kleineke, Hannes & Hovland, Stephanie R, Household Accounts of William Worsley, Dean of St Paul’s, 1479 – 1497 London Record Society, Vol. 40 (2004) (consulted via British History online)

Lang, RG (Ed.), Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls for the City of London, 1541 and 1582, (London, 1993) (Accessed through British History Online)

Ledward, K.H. (Ed.) Calendar of Close Rolls, Edward IV, Edward V, Richard III 1476 – 1485, HMSO (1954)

Ledward, K.H. (Ed.) Calendar of Close Rolls, Henry VII: Volume 1, 1485-1500, HMSO (1955)

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Luckett, D.A., The Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty: Henry VII and the Lords Willoughby de Broke, Historical Research Vol 65 (1996) pp. 261-265

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Mander, Gerald P., The Wolverhampton Antiquary, Vol. 1 (1915)

Maskelyne and H. C. Maxwell Lyte, Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem: Series 2, Volume 2, Henry VII (London, 1915) (Consulted via British History Online)

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Websites

http://aalt.law.uh.edu Anglo-American Legal Tradition. References in the text are given to image numbers rather than to the original documents for ease of access

http://aalt.law.uh.edu/indices/cp40indices/cp40_indices.html gives indices to a selection of CP40 rolls

British History Online: https://british-history.ac.uk

www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator

Hanseatic History Association: https://www.hansischergeschichtsverein.de/london-customs-accounts https://archive.org Internet Archive

https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ National Archives Discovery www.oxforddnb.com : Furdell, EL, Jenyns, Sir Stephen (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14767) and Offley, Sir Thomas (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/20568), accessed 20th Sept 2016

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/stephen_jenyns When this research began in 2016, Wikipedia contained very little on Stephen Jenyns, but a great deal has since been added, using many of the same sources.

20 Stained glass window representing Stephen Jenyns in Big School, WGS.

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