PEYTON, Edmund (by 1518-?58), of Calais.

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

Constituency

Dates

Oct. 1553
1555

Family and Education

b. by 1518, s. of (?Richard) Peyton by Alice, da. of one Layson. prob. unm.1

Offices Held

Customer of the Lantern gate, Calais 11 Apr. 1541-12 May 1552; jt. (with Thomas Fowler), waterbailiff, Calais 9 Aug. 1546-Mar. 1556 or later, sole by July 1556-8, alderman by 1553, mayor 1554-5.2

Biography

Edmund Peyton was of gentle birth and belonged to the family at Isleham in Cambridgeshire, his father being almost certainly Richard, the younger brother of Edward, John and Robert Peyton I. Richard Peyton was provided for in a family settlement of 1514 but little else is known about him apart from his death in the early 1520s; that he left a widow and an heir is inferred from the marriage of Edmund Peyton’s mother to Thomas Fowler by 1527 and from the interest shown by the childless Edward Peyton in Edmund’s well-being. Edmund Peyton seems to have been brought up by his stepfather, whose orthodoxy he shared, but he is first glimpsed in 1539 as one of his uncle Edward’s deputies as customer of the Lantern gate at Calais, serving under Thomas Broke. After Broke’s attack on the mass in the Parliament of 1539 Peyton gave evidence in London against him. According to Foxe, Peyton acted ‘out of love’ for the customership ‘rather than the truth of the matter ... through frailty of youth’ but later regretted it; in return he gained the reversion of his uncle’s post after Broke had been deprived of it. He and Broke were to be reconciled, but Peyton kept the customership until the reorganization of Edward VI’s reign.3

In 1546 Peyton joined his stepfather as water-bailiff of Calais and after Fowler’s death ten years later he held the post alone until the fall of the town. He was chosen to sit in the first Marian Parliament by the deputy and his council and in the third by the mayor and town council; on both occasions he was joined in the House by his uncle John Peyton. Neither of the Peytons opposed the initial measures to restore Catholicism but the ‘Mr. Peyton’ who voted against one of the government’s bills in 1555 was probably the uncle. Edmund Peyton’s end is obscure. The final meeting of the council of Calais was held in his house on the market place in the early hours of 7 Jan. 1558, but no further trace of him has been found. As he was not mentioned when the settlement of 1514 was invoked on his uncle John’s death in the following autumn he may be presumed to have died earlier in the year, but whether in action at Calais or from natural causes is not known.4

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: A. D.K. Hawkyard

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. PCC 10 Ketchyn.
  • 2. LP Hen. VIII, xvi, xxi; Rep. R. Comm. of 1552 (Archs. of Brit. Hist. and Culture iii). 164; CPR, 1550-3, p. 296; C219/21/211; Egerton 2094, f. 129.
  • 3. Vis. Cambs. (Harl. Soc. xli), 4-5, C142/121/104; PCC 6 Populwell, 10 Ketchyn; LP Hen. VIII, xiii, xv; Foxe, Acts and Mons. v. 509-10; Rep. R. Comm. of 1552, p. 167.
  • 4. LP Hen. VIII, xx, xxi; CPR, 1550-3, p. 404; P. T. J. Morgan, ‘The govt. of Calais, 1485-1558’ (Oxf. Univ. D. Phil. thesis, 1966), 264; C142/121/104.