HEYNES, Edward (by 1524-75 or later), of Devizes, Wilts.

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

Constituency

Dates

Nov. 1554

Family and Education

b. by 1524, ?s. of Edward Heynes of Devizes.1

Offices Held

Mayor, Devizes 1555-6, 1565-6, dep. mayor in May 1557.2

Biography

Although there was an Eynns or Heynes family at Stretton, Shropshire, which was related to Sir John Thynne, it is probable that the Member for Devizes was the son of a townsman. His namesake of St. Mary’s parish who paid 5s. on goods worth £10 towards the subsidy in 1523 was presumably also the Edward Heynes senior who contributed 20s.towards the benevolence of 1545. On this occasion a younger namesake of the same parish paid 6s.8d., and it was doubtless he who was to be assessed in 1549, 1551 and 1553, paying 10s. on goods worth £10 and each time witnessing the certificates.3

Heynes was described as a clothier when in 1555 he stood surety for his fellow-Member Thomas Hull, who had been prosecuted in the King’s bench as a ‘seceder’ from Parliament. There is nothing to reveal Heynes’s own sympathies; he held lands of two former chantries in St. Mary’s church at the end of 1555, when they were granted to William Allen, but this may have been because he or the elder Heynes had acted as steward of the property before the chantries’ dissolution. By 1560 Heynes was trading as a chandler and in the same year he was expelled from the company of burgesses for various misdemeanours committed against the mayor. He had apparently been restored by April 1561 and in 1563 he took a 60-year lease from the town of a tenement and the shop called the ‘Tolsey House’ under the guildhall; but in September 1575 he was again dismissed as ‘insufficient’, this being the last reference found to him.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: T. F.T. Baker

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference.
  • 2. B. H. Cunnington, Annals Devizes, i. p. xviii.
  • 3. Vis. Salop (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 235; E179/197/156, 198/255v, 258, 261, 288; Wilts. Arch. Soc. recs. br. x. 14.
  • 4. KB27/1177; CPR, 1555-7, p. 151; Wilts. N. and Q. ii. 581; Cunnington, i(1) 37, 44, 49, 56; Wilts. Arch. Mag. 1. 488.