Family and Education

b. by 1518; poss. bro. of William^†. m. by 1555, Elizabeth, da. of Thomas Munden of Watton at Stone wid. of Robert Burgoyne (d.1546), of Sutton, Beds., Watton at Stone and London.2

Offices Held

Bailiff, Hardwick and eight other manors, Herefs. 1546; servant of the Lords Paget 1546-70 or later; surveyor, duchy of Lancaster, south parts 28 Feb. 1548-d.; j.p. Herts. 1561, q. 1562-d., commr. benevolence Herts. 1564.3

Biography

The origins of Edmund Twyneho are obscure, but he almost certainly came of a minor family in the west country, a member of which, seated at Shipton Sollars, Gloucestershire, married into a Hertfordshire family after Twyneho’s own marriage with an heiress of the same county. His career seems to have begun in the service of Burton abbey, Staffordshire, before its dissolution in 1539; the Exchequer later paid him a pension of 100s. for an office he had once held there, and it was in 1546, when Sir William Paget acquired much of the abbey’s property, that Twyneho entered Paget’s service. In 1545 he and George Tresham bought various properties in the midlands from the crown for £868: Tresham was evidently the principal in the transaction, for he kept the lands not sold immediately, and Twyneho’s role in it may have been connected with his skill as a surveyor.4

Twyneho’s return to the first Parliament of Edward VI’s reign was doubtless the work of Paget. The city of Lichfield enlisted Paget’s aid to secure a charter of incorporation when its form of government was threatened by the abolition of the guilds, but before the charter was granted in 1548 the city was re-enfranchised. Both the Members then elected were dependents of Paget, and both obtained surveyorships in the duchy of Lancaster during his chancellorship. Although nothing has come to light about Twyneho’s part in the Commons, he doubtless supported the private Act (3 and 4 Edw. VI, no. 25) of the third session enabling his master to acquire the churchyard at West Drayton in exchange for other property. By the second Parliament of the reign Paget was under a cloud and Twyneho is not known to have been re-elected, but with Paget’s recovery under Mary he reappeared in the Parliament of April 1554, in which his master was one of the government’s spokesmen in the Lords. Twyneho’s fellow-Member Richard Cupper was another of Paget’s entourage, and it appears that they were intruded at Old Sarum, their names being added to the indenture in a different hand and Twyneho’s inserted over an erasure.5

Twyneho’s marriage brought him a house and position in Hertfordshire and later a place on the bench there, but it was also to bring him some trouble: his wife’s first husband had been an auditor in the court of augmentations and the collection of money due to him was to vex her and Twyneho. This was offset by the smoothness of his relations with Paget, whom he continued to serve at a fee of 100s. a year and under whose will, of which he was an overseer, he received a covered gilt bowl. That was not the end of his service with the family, the last reference found to him in its papers coming in 1570 when he surveyed several manors in Staffordshire. He was presumably misnamed ‘John Twyneo, esquire’ when described by Bishop Bentham of Lincoln as a ‘hinderer of religion’ in 1564, there being no man of that christian name then serving as a justice for Hertfordshire, but if he was a Catholic he was not removed from the bench where he continued to serve until his death. He died at some time after Christmas 1576 when his last quarterly fee was paid by the duchy of Lancaster, and probably by 25 Apr. 1577 when his surveyorship was granted to another. If he made a will it has not been traced, and it is not known whether he had offspring.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Elizabeth McIntyre

Notes

• 1. Hatfield 207.
• 2. Date of birth estimated from service to Burton abbey. CPR, 1555-7, p. 63; Vis. Beds. (Harl. Soc. xix), 87; PCC 14 Alen; Wm. Salt Arch. Soc. xii. 257.
• 3. LP Hen. VIII, xxi; Staffs. RO, E.P.C. 2/2, no. 6, f. 1; Somerville, Duchy, i. 447; Rep. R. Comm. of 1552 (Archs. of Brit. Hist. and Culture iii), 105-6; CPR, 1560-3, pp. 438, 577; 1563-6, pp. 23, 123; 1569-72, p. 225.
• 4. Vis. Glos. (Harl. Soc. xxi), 262-3; Vis. Herts. (Harl. Soc. xxii), 11; Vis. Som. ed. Metcalfe, 132; Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, iii. 34-35; Staffs. RO, EPC2/2, no. 6, f. 1; information from C. J. Harrison; LP Hen. VIII, xx.
• 5. J. C. Wedgwood, Staffs. Parlt. Hist. (Wm. Salt Arch. Soc.), i. 327; C219/22/91; Wilts. N. and Q. viii. 392-5, 483; VCH Wilts. viii. 104.
• 6. VCH Herts. iii. 162-3; W. C. Richardson, Ct. Augmentations, 55; CPR, 1555-7, p. 63; Cam. Misc. ix(3), 30; xxv. 139; PCC 27 Chayre; Somerville, i. 447; Staffs. RO, EPC2/2, no. 20, f. 54; Staffs. Rec. Soc. 1939, pp. 153-5, 157.