MEDE (A MEDE), Robert (by 1475-?1516), of Rye, Suss.

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

Constituency

Dates

1512
1515

Family and Education

b. by 1475. ?m. 2s. inc. William.3

Offices Held

Chamberlain, Rye 1496-7, jurat 1510-16, mayor 1514-16.4

Biography

Nothing has come to light about Robert Mede save the outline of his municipal and parliamentary career. When in December 1510 the mayor of Rye, Nicholas Sutton, chose Mede and two others as jurats, bringing the number up to the still low total of eight, Richard Berkeley refused to accept their election unless Thomas Basseden, expelled some years earlier, was re-admitted a jurat; this the mayor refused to do and Berkeley was dismissed from the juratship. It was with Sutton that Mede sat in the Parliaments of 1512 and 1515. His receipt of £6 15s. in wages for 67 days at the first session of 1512, of £5 2s. for 51 days at the second, and of £5 for 50 days at the session of 1514 suggests that besides attending all three from start to finish he had spent additional time in the capital on the town’s business; in 1515, by contrast, he was paid for five days less than the two sessions of that year had lasted. Mede probably died in the summer of 1516, between his appointment in July to represent Rye for the sixth successive year at the Brotherhood of the Cinque Ports at New Romney and his omission from the list of jurats elected at the end of August. No will appears to have survived, but it is probable that William Mede, one of the Members for the town in 1542, was his son.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Helen Miller

Notes

  • 1. Add. 34150, f. 136.
  • 2. Rye chamberlains’ accts. 4, f. 11v.
  • 3. Date of birth estimated from first reference.
  • 4. Rye chamberlains’ accts. 3, 4 passim.
  • 5. Ibid. 3 ff. 278v 294, 315; 4, ff. 11v, 22v, 252; Cinque Ports White and Black Bks. (Kent Arch. Soc. recs. br. xix), 121, 128, 146-62.