Family and Education

b. by 1524. educ. M. Temple. m. Agnes, 2s. 3da.1

Offices Held

Comptroller of the pipe roll by 1545-Sept. 1562 mayor, Chipping Wycombe 1555-6; baron of the Exchequer 30 Sept. 1562-d.2

Biography

Thomas Pymme alias Fryer was perhaps a grandson of Thomas Pymme, mayor of Wycombe in the reign of Henry VIII, whose son and namesake was apposer of the foreign receipts of the Exchequer from 1516. The apposer died in 1549, leaving houses in Wycombe and Islington, Middlesex, to his wife, with remainder to his ‘cousin’ Thomas Pymme alias Fryer. Edward Frere, whose grandfather had migrated to Oxford from Wycombe in 1525, was also a ‘cousin’ of the apposer but the exact relationship between the two families, and with it the explanation of Pymme’s alias, has not come to light.3

After studying at the Middle Temple, Pymme presumably owed his introduction to the Exchequer to his kinsman the apposer. A list of fees in 1545 describes the comptroller of the pipe roll as Thomas Pymme junior. Only Thomas Pymme senior was assessed for subsidy at Wycombe in that year but in 1550 the younger man held land and cottages there and five years later he was elected mayor. Whatever his standing in the town, however, Pymme may have owed his returns to the second and fifth of Mary’s Parliaments rather to his professional tie with Sir Edmund Peckham, whose son Henry was his fellow-Member in the spring of 1554.4

Pymme was present as one of the aldermen and late mayors in June 1566 when the arms of Wycombe were ratified. He made his will on 20 Oct. 1566 and died soon afterwards, being replaced at the Exchequer on the following 12 Nov. He asked to be buried in Wycombe church, in the chapel beside his pew, and left copyholds there and in Islington to his wife and executrix, who was to pay for the education of his sons Timothy (recently admitted to the Middle Temple) and Henry. The will was proved on 13 Mar. 1567.5

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: M. K. Dale

Notes

• 1. Date of birth estimated from first reference. PCC 8 Stonard.
• 2. E405/115/47v, 117/25, 39, 121/22v, 26; Stowe 571, f. 6; First Wycombe Ledger Bk. (Bucks. Rec. Soc. xi), no. 99; CPR, 1560-3, p. 248.
• 3. First Wycombe Ledger Bk. nos. 55, 56, 67-70, 76; Bucks. RO, D/A/WE/1/203; LP Hen. VIII, ii; PCC 1 Coode; Oxf. Recs. 54.
• 4. E179/78/32, 125; 405/115/8v, 9, 47v; CPR, 1550-3. p. 3.
• 5. HMC 5th Rep. 565; Vis. Bucks. ed. Harvey, 49; PCC 8 Stonard; CPR, 1563-6, p. 483.