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PYJON, John, of Shaftesbury, Dorset.
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?yr. s. of John Pyjon† of Shaftesbury. m. Margery.
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If this John was the son of the namesake who had sat for Shaftesbury in the Parliaments of 1351, 1354, 1358 and 1360, then he was younger brother to the latter’s heir, Thomas, and a cousin of Roger Pyjon*. John senior purchased property in Shaftesbury and in 1377 was recorded as tenant of the manor of Barford St. Martin near Wilton, by grant of the Essex knight of the shire Sir Alexander Goldingham†. He may have died later that year for Thomas was then held responsible for paying the annual rent of £10 for the manor.1 In fact there may well have been three John Pyjons, for in 1362 a John ‘junior’, having been outlawed following a plea that he had failed to render account to John Mayhew, forfeited his five cottages in Shaftesbury, which, 20 years later, he petitioned should be restored to him.2
It was probably the parliamentary burgess who by 1394 owned a house in St. Mary’s parish, Shaftesbury, and who later paid rent to Robert Fovent* for other premises there. However, his local holdings were occasionally the subject of suits brought at the Dorchester assizes: in 1401 he was charged with Thomas Pyjon and others of illegally evicting a chaplain from his lands in Shaftesbury; in the following year he was accused of withholding 16s. annual rent from the abbot of Sherborne; and in 1416 it was alleged that he had wrongfully disseised Thomas Cammell* of property in the town. After his return to the Leicester Parliament in the spring of 1414, Pyjon was sent to the shire court at Dorchester to report the results of the Shaftesbury elections of November that year. He again acted in this capacity in 1425, after which nothing more is heard of him.3
Ref Volumes: 1386-1421
Author: L. S. Woodger
Notes
Variants: Peion, Pejon, Pyion.
