Family and Education

b. by 1482. ?m. settlement Sept./Oct. 1503, Dorothy da. of Robert Castell of East Hatley, Cambs., wid. of James Caldecote (d. 27 Jan. 1501) of Thundersley, Essex.2

Offices Held

Commr. sewers, Cambs., Norf. 1503, Cambs., Hunts., Leics., Northants. 1515, subsidy, Hunts. 1512, 1514, 1515; j.p. Hunts. 1504-14 or later.3

Biography

John Wynde’s Membership of the first Parliament of Henry VIII’s reign is known from an information laid by him in February 1511 against the ex-sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, Francis Hasilden. He alleged that Hasilden had collected the sum of £16 due to Wynde and his fellow-knight John Taylard for their wages and travelling expenses but had ignored repeated requests to hand it over to them, thus forfeiting £20 to the crown and £10 to Wynde, besides being liable to Wynde for 10 marks incurred in bringing the action. A day to hear the case was fixed in late April but the hearing was twice postponed and after 30 May nothing more is heard of it. Wynde may well have been re-elected to the next two Parliaments, for which the names of the Huntingdonshire knights are unknown, as he was named to the commissions charged with supervising the collection of the subsidies then granted.4

Apart from this episode and his role in Huntingdonshire little has come to light about Wynde, whose origins are as obscure as his end. Doubtless belonging to the Fenland family which can be traced back to the early 14th century, he probably followed in its tradition of service to local monasteries. A bearer of his name was bailiff to Ramsey abbey in 1509, and either this man or a namesake was the ‘John Wynde junior of Ramsey, gentleman’ who six years earlier had been named feoffee of property in St. Ives and not long afterwards acquired land at Ramsey. The Member’s connexion with Ramsey is suggested by his having asked for payment there when suing out his writ de expensis, while the links between Ramsey abbey and the Castell family of East Hatley in Cambridgeshire make it likely that he was the second husband of Dorothy Castell. Wynde is last found on commissions for Huntingdonshire in 1515 and his absence from the subsidy commission of 1523 seems to imply that he was dead by that year. He could have been the John Wynde accused in 1520-1 of dispossessing the rightful owners of four houses and 55 acres in Godmanchester, but this was more probably the namesake (perhaps son) who became comptroller of the mint at York in 1545 and died nine years later.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. K. Dale

Notes

• 1. E13/187, m. 30.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from first reference. Feet of Fines, Cambs. ed. Palmer, 127; CIPM Hen. VII, ii. 611, 624; Vis. Cambs. (Harl. Soc. xli), 42.
• 3. CPR, 1494-1509, pp. 322, 359, 507, 627, 644; LP Hen. VIII, i, ii; Statutes, iii. 82, 115, 175.
• 4. E13/187, m. 30.
• 5. Early Hunts. Lay Subsidy Rolls (Subsidia Mediaevalia viii), 166; LP Hen. VIII, i, xxi; CCR, 1500-9, no. 386; Feet of Fines, Hunts. ed. Turner, 114, 116, 121, 124-5, 130, 182; Brit. Numismatic Jnl. xlv. 72; PCC 29 Tashe.