Family and Education

Offices Held

Mayor, Lyme Regis 1444, 1451.1

Biography

John was perhaps descended from Richard Tynham†, who had sat in Parliament for Lyme seven times between 1378 and 1385, and who, by royal appointment, officiated as bailiff of the town in 1380-1. He himself is first recorded in 1394 when he witnessed a conveyance of property in Lyme. Following his own service in the Commons in the two Parliaments of 1414, he was regularly deputed by his fellow burgesses to ride to Dorchester to report the results of the borough elections, doing so for the assemblies of 1422, 1425, 1427, 1429, 1431, 1432, 1435, 1437, 1449 (Feb.) and 1449 (Nov.), on the last of which occasions he also provided securities for the attendance of the Lyme representatives, Thomas Umfrey† and John Montgomery†. It was doubtless as mayor of Lyme that he received the royal letters patent which, dated 30 Jan. 1444 and addressed to himself and the burgesses, granted the latter as a body custody of the town for the next 60 years, provided that they rendered the full fee farm.2

Ref Volumes: 1386-1421

Author: L. S. Woodger

Notes

This John Tynham may be identical with the son of Alexander Tynham of Warmwell, Dorset, who conveyed his lands in Warmwell and Watercombe to feoffees in 1424, and as ‘alias Saunders of Yeovil’, disposed of the same to the North family in 1432 (J. Hutchins, Dorset, i. 431-2). But Tynham was a fairly common surname in Dorset.

• 1. Hutchins, ii. 48.
• 2. CFR, ix. 195; C146/1597; C219/13/1, 3, 5, 14/1-3, 5, 15/1, 6, 7; CPR, 1441-6, p. 230.