LYTE, Edmund (by 1521-58 or later), of Ubley Bridgwater, Som.

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

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

b. by 1521, 5th s. of Thomas Lyte (d.1523) of Lytes Cary by Margery, da. and h. of John Drew of Bridgwater; bro. of Anthony. m. 1s. 3da.2

Offices Held

Searcher, port of Bridgwater 23 May 1552; sewer of the chamber by 1553.3

Biography

Little has been discovered about Edmund Lyte. According to an account of his family compiled in the early 17th century, he was ‘chief butler’ in the port of Bridgwater and ‘depended upon’ Sir William Capell: the patron concerned was probably Capell’s son Sir Giles Capell, for whom Lyte was a party to settlements of land in Essex in 1538 and 1548, and whose first wife was a daughter of Richard Newton of Ubley, where Lyte is said to have lived in 1554.4

The Members for Bridgwater in the Parliament of 1555 are unknown but in November 1556 Lyte gave the town an acquittance for expenses incurred in the passage of the Act of 1555 for the viewing and selling of cloths called Bridgwaters (2 and 3 Phil. and Mary, c. 12), and he was presumably the ‘Mr. Lyght’ listed as following Sir Anthony Kingston in opposition to a government bill. He could have obtained his seat as a customer and been further advantaged by the influence of his maternal relations in Bridgwater; his stepfather Hugh Trotter, also a customer, had been returned for the town in 1529.5

The last references found to Lyte are in 1558 when he contributed money and arms for the recapture of Calais and when he was described in a land transaction as of Bridgwater, gentleman.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. K. Dale

Notes

  • 1. Bridgwater corp. ms 1877.
  • 2. Date of birth estimated from father’s death and his having two younger brothers. E150/911/1; Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Proc. xxxviii, 32; Collinson, Som. iii. 193.
  • 3. CPR, 1550-3, p. 380; LC2/4, f. 20.
  • 4. Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Proc. xxxviii, 32, 35, 94; Collinson, ii. 156.
  • 5. Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Proc. xxxviii, 32; Bridgwater corp. ms 1877; Guildford mus. Loseley 1331/2.
  • 6. Bridgwater corp. ms 124; Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Proc. xxxviii. 154.