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CAPLYN, John II (d.c.1603), of Southampton.
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Biography Detail
Related Resources
Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
s. of John Caplyn I of Southampton. educ. I. Temple 1562. m. 1574, Anne, da. of Thomas Chester. suc. fa. c.1569.
Offices Held
Comptroller, Southampton 1595, commr. piracy 1603.
Biography
Caplyn inherited property in Southampton, a share of a tin mine in Cornwall and the manor of South Stoneham, Hampshire, which he sold in 1600. As a property owner he should have appeared regularly at the Southampton court leet, but was frequently fined for non-attendance. Little is known about his career, nor is it clear how he came to be connected with Bishop Horne, who wrote to the mayor and his brethren of Winchester asking them to ‘nominate and elect’ Caplyn to the 1572 Parliament. Caplyn would ‘ease you of such trouble and charges as usually you have been at in that behalf, so that therein you shall further yourselves and also pleasure me’. On 21 Feb. 1576 Caplyn was appointed to the committee concerned with the butlerage and prizage of wines. In 1595 Caplyn was sick and an application was made to Lord Burghley for the reversion of his office of comptroller. In February 1597 he, the customer of Southampton and the keeper of the storehouse at Portsmouth, were called before the Privy Council to answer an allegation by a Venetian merchant that they had sold corn taken from him at Portsmouth during a time of scarcity at less than its value. Judgment was given against them in May 1598. For the 1597 subsidy Caplyn was assessed in Southampton on goods to the value of £5. After 1601 his name no longer appears among the free suitors of the court leet there, but he was evidently still connected with the town, as he was appointed a piracy commissioner there on 8 Oct. 1603. He may have died shortly afterwards.
PCC 9 Lyon; Vis. Glos. (Harl. Soc. xxi), 39; VCH Hants, iii. 483; Ct. Leet Recs. (Soton Rec. Soc.), passim; HMC 6th Rep. 605; CJ, i. 107; CSP Dom. 1595-7, p. 53; 1598-1601, p. 15; APC, xxvi. 445, 527, 550; xxvii. 99, 122; xxviii. 167, 440; Black Bk. iii. (Soton Rec. Soc.), 96.
